The Dark Lady (66 page)

A tear slid down his cheek and he pressed his fingers harder against her. He waited. Then there it was. Another small jump under his finger. His breath released in sighed of relief so strong he started to cry.

He looked up into Verges’s pained brown eyes, so filled with love and fear that he placed a hand on the man’s massive forearm. “Her pulse is weak, but it is there.” He ran his hand over and over across her cheek as he had three years ago, but what was once warm and smooth skin was now cold and clammy. “She is just so cold, deathly cold.”

Verges stood with her in his arms and cradled her to his chest. He turned to look up the steep embankment, his face setting in a tight line of determination.

Peter followed his gaze up the muddy wall before them. He took a deep breath, losing himself in an overwhelming sense of dread and failure.

Peter looked back at Van and resisted the urge to take her, even though he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and never let go. He knew if he did, he would sink to the ground and never move. And that would not help her.

He pushed the tears away and tried to concentrate on getting her out of the ravine. Falling apart in self-pity was the worst thing he could do.

He reached across, touched her cold face one more time, and turned away. The mud of the high wall was steep and slippery. It had taken skill to make it down. He would never make it up with her, no one would.

Richard slid down the bank. He laid his hand upon her face.

It scared Peter how pale she was. Paler than that dreaded powder had made her he thought.

“
How do we get her up?” Richard asked dropping his hand to his side.

Peter shook his head. He did not know and that terrified him. He watched as Verges handed her limp body to Richard.

Peter looked up at his men. There were at least a dozen standing looking down into the deep pit. One man would not be able to get her up, but many might.

Verges pulled off his cloak, draped it across her, and began to tuck it under her.

Peter took some of her weight in his arms and between the three of them they soon had her wrapped tightly in the woolen cloak that was still warm from Verges’s body heat.

She began shivering so badly that Peter was beginning to think his idea of rescue was too late.

“
I want all the men to take a position on the embankment. It is slippery and unstable, but we are going to pass her up.” His trembling voice sent the men into action.

He could see his pain and fear reflected in their faces as they took unstable footholds down the bank.

He turned to Richard and smiled, or tried to. “She will be fine, she cannot be otherwise.” His eyes stung with tears that threaten to fall once more. “The Dark Knight is an irritating brat and is too stubborn to be anything but fine.”

With the men in place, Peter and Verges made their way up the ladder of men, hand after hand assisting them to the grassy bank above. “Hand her up.”

Carefully, from arm to arm, they handed her up. Peter’s heart slipped into his stomach every time one of the men would slip in the thick sludge. Hands would grab and stabilize, but Peter did not draw an easy breath until Van made it to safety.

Verges took her at the top. Peter mounted Jackal, who pawed restlessly at the grass. Verges handed her to Peter and quickly mounted Damien.

Peter let out a tight breath, not knowing he had been holding it until she was safe in his arms.

He spurred homeward. Peter had never been more afraid in his life. Her shivers became more violent as the day raged on.

He wanted nothing more than to stop and just hold her, but he kept on. He had to get her to the doctor.

The hours passed until he was finally at home. With Van in his arms he mounted the stairs to their chambers, unmindful of the thick slimy trail of mud he left across the clean rushes.

He took her to the bed that he had not shared with her the last few days, all because of his pride and stupidity.

CHAPTER 31

The surgeon quietly examined Van as Peter watched over her with a growing sense of dread. The doctor said nothing as he listened to her chest and her back. Said nothing as he smelt her breath and then began to scrub her arm.

He pulled the stitches from the angry red gash and cleansed it well.

Peter watched all this and barely contained the need to yell at the doctor, to grasp him by the hair, and scream at him to say something, anything. He held back, knowing the doctor didn’t even want him in the room, but Peter had refused to leave.

Finally, when Peter was sure he was at the end of his patience, the doctor turned to him. “I scrubbed her arm. It is still draining infection, so it must be kept clean and as dry as possible. I will replace the stitches when it stops draining.”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but a lump of tears suddenly clogged his throat. He swallowed hard and tried again, the words came out, but they were weak and terrified. “Is she going to be well?” He did not think he wanted to hear the answer and the doctor’s sudden look of pity made him cringe.

“
She has a lung inflammation, the infection from her arm has weakened her body, and the dunking in the cold river pushed her over the brink.” He shook his head sadly and continued with that incessant look of pity that Peter wanted to pummel off of his face. “I want you to be prepared for the worst. I have seldom seen someone this far advanced pull through.”

A scream welled up inside Peter, but he held it in. A tear was all that escaped. It slid down his cheek, but he ignored it.

“
If she makes it through the night it will be a good omen, but...” The doctor let his voice trail off, saying clearly there was not much hope.

Peter shook his head and sat beside her on the bed. He did not look up when the doctor left. Taking her trembling hands, he kissed them gently. She did not move.

Peter slid in beside her silent body and as night fell Van began to speak. She talked in her delirium to men and women from her past. Peter wondered how much of it was delusion or how many of the wild tales were true.

He sent up a prayer that he would get the chance to find out. He held her close until sleep finally took him.

Morning came and with it the first of the visitors. Matthew arrived at the castle not long after the sun had risen. Peter sat beside Van when Matthew came in to talk to her.

His talks with his daughter had been painful to listen to even though he had been with him through much of it and already knew the tale. Peter watched his face range from pained to ashamed and knew the telling of it was just as painful to say as it was to listen to.

He told her of his life and of the pain of losing her. Of how he regretted it all. He kissed her gently, telling her he would repeat it all to her when she was well.

Peter shuddered and hoped he got the opportunity.

Matthew turned to Peter with a weak smile and a shrug. “Perhaps it will be easier the second time it is told, eh, my boy?”

Peter grasped his trembling shoulder, thinking again how alike the two were. It was more than looks. Matthew may not have raised his daughter, but her temperament was all his.

Matthew took Van’s chambers, telling Amy she could move a pallet into the room if she liked. She accepted gratefully and Devon took his place at her side. No one mentioned they were not yet married, and Peter would have had someone’s head if they had. They only wanted to be close to Van while she was ill and he would do everything he could to allow it.

The men came and went throughout the day, most only staying for a few moments to check her progress.

It was late afternoon when Peter closed his eyes. He had just begun to doze off when Margaret stopped in with a smile. Peter opened his eyes, but barely registered her asking if she could put a pallet in the hall for that large scary man because he slept on the floor the night before and refused to leave the doorway.

Peter was weary and exhausted. His mind was beyond rational thought. He nodded. She leaned over, kissed Van on the forehead, and Peter slipped into darkness.

When he opened his eyes, the sunlight had faded and Margaret was gone. He lay there for a moment and tried to decide if she had ever been there. He slowly pulled his arm from under Van and slid from the bed.

He tried to remember what Margaret had said, something about the big man sleeping out in the hall? He quietly opened the door and indeed Verges was on a pallet right outside. To Peter’s surprise Richard lay sleeping beside him.

Verges opened his eyes. “She all right?” His voice was weary and tired.

Peter shook his head. He wished he knew. “You did not come to see her.”

Verges looked down and then back up at him. “It was hard not to, but I did not know if I was welcome.”

“
Always,” Peter said with a smile and walked back into the room.

Peter slid into the bed with her, but sleep eluded him. He kissed her gently and closed his eyes, pulling her overly warm body against his. He did not know how long he laid there before he heard the door open. He opened his eyes only a slit and saw Verges slowly walking toward the bed.

Peter closed his eyes again. He did not want to intrude, but as he was also curious of what the man might say, he feigned sleep. The bed shifted, not enough to indicate that Verges had sat on it, but Peter thought he might have knelt on the floor and rested his arms upon it.

It was silent for long enough for Peter to wonder if perhaps he would not speak. Then his deep voice started in a thick whisper.

He spoke to her of past times and things they had done together. Peter again was surprised as he had been when her men had come to speak to her. They too spoke to her of the past and he was amazed that many of the stories of the young upstart knight had not been embellished.

It was more than the stories they told, it was the concern and love that Peter heard in their voices, as he now heard it in Verges’s, and that affected Peter the most.

When Peter opened his eyes again it was to the burning heat against him. Her body twitched as she kicked at the covers. Her high fever scared him and he prayed again that it would soon break.

He looked for Verges, but he was gone. Peter wondered how long he had slept and when he had drifted off.

He got up quickly and brought the night basin over beside the bed. He dipped a soft cloth in the cold water and began to wash her body, trying desperately to cool the burning inside her.

***

The days passed in slow agony for the Grayweist household. Days that Peter did not leave her side, alternating between cold sponge baths to cool her when her fever raged at its highest and laying naked against her, clasping her tightly in a desperate effort to share his warmth when the chills gripped her in their deadly clutches.

It was the same routine over and again all through the long and tedious hours, hours that turned to days. Days that threatened to steal what little sanity Peter had managed to hold on to.

It had gone on for a sennight. Peter’s patience and his temper were running thin. He sat watching Verges pace in tight circles like a caged beast until he could stand it no longer. He threw his hands in the air and slapped them against his thighs. “Stop pacing,” he said, his voice coming out gruffer than he had intended.

Verges stopped suddenly. “I just feel so useless. What can I do, my lord?” He looked for the world like a lost child.

A distraction was in order before he drove Peter mad. “You can help me with something that I think Vanessa—” He took a deep breath. “Van will approve of.”

Verges listened intently to his instructions. A wide smile spread across his face as Peter told him to retrieve her mistresses and their children.

Peter smiled back, but thought Verges’s smile just as gruesome as his scowl.

He breathed a sigh of relief when Verges walked out of the room. Turning to look at his wife, he cocked his head. For the first time since he had returned home with her, she lay easy, her breathing calm.

He walked to the large chair he had pulled next to the bed and sat carefully, never taking his gaze from her. He ran his large and calloused fingers along her cool skin, the other hand grasping her limp fingers.

It only took moments to realize her fever had broken and joy bubbled up inside him like a geyser. He had to clamp his lips together tightly to keep from crying out in relief.

It must have happened during the early morning hours. He caressed her cool face and thought back to the night before. Peter realized he had been drenched in her sweat as she embraced him tightly, lost in the grips of a dream. It had been a horrid nightmare and Peter had been terrified.

He closed his eyes against the pain and shuddered as once more he could feel Van writhing in his arms, her body burning with fever. He had not known what else to do but hold her. So that is what he did.

She screamed for Richard to live, her desperate cry cutting through Peter like a dagger. Clinging to him desperately, she told Richard she was sorry. She pleaded with him, telling him that if he would only live she would be the perfect squire, obedient, and calm.