Scoundrel's Kiss (10 page)

He unlocked the door and stood between
Ada and the men who entered: Pacheco, Latorre, the physician, and three armed
guards.

He glared at each in turn before
settling on Pacheco. The shard pinched the inside of his palm as he squeezed.
"She rests for the first time in an hour and you choose now to
intrude?"

Pacheco glanced at Ada, men pinned his
black glass eyes on Gavriel. "What is this I hear from the
physician?"

The bird man puffed out his chest
Gavriel looked him up and down, once, before asking, "Does he even have a
name?"

"I am called Mendes, novice,
and—"

"He didn't have the courtesy to
introduce himself." Gavriel rubbed the back of his neck but found no
relief from the festering tension. "And he insisted on performing a
bloodletting."

Pacheco's eloquent shrug cast doubt on
actions that had been so clear. "And? If her humors are out of balance, it
may be necessary."

"It
is
necessary,"
Mendes said, his narrow face darkening to the color of thinned wine. "She
is clearly disturbed and a threat to everyone here."

Gavriel inhaled. The more he thought
about what he had seen and heard and—saints save him—
felt
in
her company, the more pressing became the need to escape. But then Mendes made
ridiculous comments and his every protective impulse raged to life.

Rage. Yes. He breathed it in, welcoming
an old friend

"Look at her," he said,
pointing with the shard. "That sleeping woman is a threat to you?"

"For certain!"

Gavriel stepped closer, bearing down on
the scrawny physician with all the force he could reasonably contain.
"Then what does that make me?"

The guards drew their weapons.

"Gavriel!" Pacheco's
expression remained mild despite the sting of his voice. "You cannot
threaten these people! We are guests in this place."

"But perhaps not for long,"
said Latorre. "This novice deserves discipline for such behavior, Brother
Pacheco."

Gavriel tossed the shard to one side,
secretly enjoying how each of the three guards flinched behind their weapons.
But not only would a disciplinary action mean confinement or
fasting—never an inviting prospect—he would be separated from Ada,
his trial a disastrous failure. For both their stakes, he banked the rage that
had been such a brief indulgence.

He appealed to Pacheco, the only man of
the six who might yet be a friend to her cause. "Master, she is... she is
afraid of being cut."

"'Tis the opium," Pacheco
said. "You're letting her speak her mind when she has no mind of her
own."

Gavriel flinched, suddenly ashamed for
having Ada's ailment spoken aloud. Latorre and Mendes no longer regarded her as
a witch or a contagion, but as a creature to be pitied. For Ada's sake, he
wanted none of their shame.

He awaited only Pacheco's decision, but
he did not know what he wanted to hear. An unwilling part of him was invested
in her well-being now, if only to win against a very determined opponent.
Gavriel had not had the opportunity to compete—to truly test himself
against another person—in years. If he could not do it with swords and
tactics, he would do so with strength and skill of another kind.

"What happened to allowing me to
proceed as I saw fit?" he asked.

"Your judgment is in
question," said Pacheco.

"But I know the difference between
when the opium speaks for her and abject terror."

Latorre raised his eyebrows and leered.
"You know her so well, novice?"

Gavriel turned and removed the
sheepskin mantle. "Look for yourself. She has scars on the soles of her
feet. Someone deliberately tortured her."

Pacheco stared at him. Ants crawling
over his skin would have been more pleasant. "You're tired, Gavriel,"
he said.

"You cannot possibly understand
her fear. She was frightened, and this arrogant swine treated her like the
lowest animal."

Mendes sputtered again. His eyes
bounced between Pacheco and Latorre, perhaps looking for someone to voice the
indignation he could not

But Latorre only gaped at Ada's bared
feet and calves. "You removed her boots? Without a chaperone?"

Gavriel yanked the mantle into place.
"She has a fever and was unable to remove them. What was I supposed to
do?"

"Send for a maid or a nun,"
said Latorre.

"Like the one who held her
down?" The sharp spike of his voice bounded around the room's low stone
walls.

"She did so that I might perform
bloodletting," said Mendes. "This woman would be recovered by now had
you not interfered."

"You did not even inquire as to
her illness," said Gavriel. "Opium, plague, dropsy—the remedy
is all the same to you."

Mendes pointed with his flapping sleeve.
"This is intolerable. I want him disciplined!"

Latorre nodded, turning his doughy face
to Pacheco. "I agree with Senor Mendes. This boy must be reprimanded"

Gavriel clenched his fists. "I'm
no boy, you—"

"I'll not be told how to oversee
my own novice." Never raising his voice to the others' distress, Pacheco's
black eyes held each man enthralled. "Do you understand my meaning?"

"I understand," said Latorre.
"But I also understand that my place as the archbishop's majordomo
entitles me to permit you refuge. Or to deny it."

"Brother Latorre, are you
threatening me?"

"No, only this novice of
yours." Latorre glanced at Ada. "Him and the madwoman you've brought
into our midst I want them both out. Tonight"

Chapter 7

'They made us leave? Because of
me?"

Gavriel said nothing, only supported
her weight against his shoulder. Their possessions, hastily gathered, thumped
against their backs with each shuffling step. Ada's knees and ankles had turned
to water. The springtime chill wrapped around her and filled every pore. She
nestled deeper into Gavriel's arms for both steadiness and warmth. She hoped
that, in her moment of desperation, she would have held to any man with as much
fervor.

When she lifted her head, she saw two
parallel lines of houses stretching before them. An interminable length. Nausea
blossomed at the prospect of walking such a distance—or being dragged,
more like.

"Hardly seems fair to you,"
she said, choking back the taste of bile. "Cast out with me."

His voice rumbled near her ear, a quiet
thunder. "Is that an apology?"

"I don't believe so. You brought
this on yourself."

"Keep saying that,
inglesa."
He stopped and hiked her up as she slumped. "Then you won't share the
responsibility."

She licked her lips, thirstier than she
could ever remember. "You're not my master."

"Nor do I want to be."

"Then why do you do
this?"   

"I am bound to," he said
quickly. "All I want is your cooperation."

She stumbled, but he did not let her
fall. Anger and the familiar whiplash of betrayal struck against her breastbone.
"This is Jacob's fault, isn't it?"

"Not entirely. You are my..."

"What?"

He stopped before the wide arches and
painted brick of a former mosque, now a renovated cathedral, and scowled down
at her. But the hesitance in his voice spoke of doubt. "You are my final
test before joining the Order. I must get you ' well or risk failing my
novitiate."

Every sensation of safety and
unexpected comfort fled. He had defended her against the physician, keeping her
warm, all
 
to fulfill an
obligation. "You treat me as a game you must win."

"And I will win, for your sake and
for mine."                 
   

"Do what you must I haven't the
energy to fight you. Not tonight" The dim, narrow street threatened to tip
upside-down.
 
Her pulse thrummed at
the pace of a galloping steed She swallowed like trying to gorge on her own
tongue—anything,
anything
to keep from vomiting in his presence.
"Where are we going?"             
                     
                     

"You shouldn't talk," he
said. 

"Ask questions, more like. Because
you don't know yourself?"

"I seek a place that has neither a
mewling physician nor delicate furnishings. With you, sturdiness takes
precedent overall.”

He nodded to an
adarve,
a
dead-end courtyard opposite the cathedral. They hobbled across the narrow
street to one of the meager dwellings that abutted the courtyard's far side.
Although deserted, the poorly lit stretch of crude brick hovels fairly hummed
with unseen activities. Night places.

"Jacob rescues me from a brothel,
you hobble us both with the need to keep me from harming myself, and then you
bring me here? Odds on my finding opium are high."

"I have no intention of letting
you try," he said. "Master Pacheco gave me the name of a woman who
might take us in."

Ada stared at him, trying to interpret
the strange catch in his voice. The pale moon and sprinkled stars did not
provide light enough to read him—but then, neither would full sunlight.
But he was uncomfortable. The arm he wrapped beneath hers had tensed, as had
the rippling strength of his abdomen.

"Tell me."

Gavriel frowned and shook his head.
"She... the woman. She's a
covigera."

Laughter pushed into her throat where
bile had been. She savored that brief moment of levity, watching his
embarrassment. "I have nothing to tempt a
covigera"

Eyes made black by shadows probed hers
and skittered over her features, cataloguing each expanse of skin. Ada felt a
blush crawl over her cheeks, following the path of his eyes—a heat
altogether different from her fever.

His arm still banded her middle,
pulling her closer than she had been. With a voice almost too low to be heard,
he whispered, "You..
r

"I
what?"

"You tempt me."

She breathed. Only just. The harsh
honesty of those three words peeled past her pain and anger, just for a moment,
and revealed a much deeper need for hard muscle and warm skin. But to
acknowledge that need—
no.
She had no desire to surrender to the
man who insisted on keeping her prisoner. One foolish craving was already more
than she could bear.

"But you're not in the business of
arranging illicit affairs with married women," she said, trying to revive
her fleeting laughter. "One such as me would not be worth her notice"

He pulled his spine straight and
withdrew to a place of I safety within himself, like donning armor before
battle. As he knocked on the
covigera's
door, his eyes blank and his
face impassive, he concealed that spark of honest lust He hid it so thoroughly
as to make Ada doubt its existence. The tingling along the backs of her thighs
could have been fever, not the effect of his heated stare. And those throaty
words could have been a whimsy created by her addled brain.

Caught by sickness, her body and her
mind could not be trusted.

Yes. That was it.     
                     
                     
         

"She's a mess," said the
grizzled woman, her wispy gray hair like a halo. Pacheco had referred to her as
simply La Senora.

A constellation of brown spots colored
her papery skin.
 
Watery eyes, one
of them pure white, roved over Ada where she had slumped against the wall,
awake but quiet and still. "You looking to sell her?" she asked.

Gavriel pushed his lips together and
worked to keep his temper in check, an increasingly difficult task as fatigue
ate , his patience. "No. I need a place to stay with her, unnoticed.
 
Most likely for a few days."

"Ah, keep her for yourself.
Comprendo."
The crone hobbled to Ada and bent low, taking her chin between gnarled
fingers. Ada did not resist, but neither did she meet La Senora's eyes. Her
listlessness and pallor could only mean her fever had returned, shoving her
personality into a distant corner. "Could be pretty when she's
clean."

He pulled a bag of morabetins from his
satchel and rattled the heavy gold coins. "Do you have water? And a
room?"         

La Senora stood and looked him full in
the face. "You a
caballero?
Here to mess my business?"

"The girl is my only
concern."

A bright cackle sprang from her mouth,
revealing crusted yellow teeth spaced with gaping holes. He stifled the need to
shield his nose from her foul breath. "Girl is your only concern. Ha! I
like your mind." She pointed a knobby forefinger to his chest, then snatched
the bag of coins. "But mess my business and you leave. Wives want no
witnesses, hear? None. Lovesick boys don't want no wives scared off. And me, I
don't want the pyre."