The Good Sinner's Naughty Nun (10 page)

The boat yawed, groaning and popping. She swallowed a mouthful of water and choked, spitting.

Was someone calling her name?

The clouds above splintered with a flare of brilliant lightening, stealing the breath out of her in shock and then the thunder followed. Here came the next wave. She tasted it already. The planks gave way beneath her feet and she was caught up, blown like a dry leaf over the shattered side of the vessel. Water bubbled in her ears. She shook her head, turning her face up to the wind, gasping for a breath. But the air was just as damp, just as salty. Her hands still clung to the strip of wood and it had saved her from going under. Her heart was beating, but it did not sound like hers; the rhythm seemed to mock her. She kicked hard, battling her nun's robes to stay afloat.

Oh no, she was not going to die today, not like this, not here.

A larger, curved section of torn boat floated within her grasp and she caught hold as another swell conveniently brought it close enough. Summoning all her strength, she pulled herself onto it. Lightening flared again and thunder bounced heavily over her head. Now, she supposed, would be as good a time as any to pray. Even if it wouldn't be heard, it seemed the thing to do.

Just as she began mumbling the only prayer she knew, her lost gaze stumbled and caught upon the sight of a head bobbing nearby, face down in the sea. A golden head with a sun-browned neck below it.

Her prayer cut short, she grabbed his hand seconds before he sank below the surface, and she pulled. She pulled harder than she'd ever pulled anything in her life. Her precarious raft tipped and swayed, water lapping over her feet. He was heavy. The chainmail of course, she realized. He was too heavy for her to lift. His hand slipped from hers and he began to drift away.

She cursed frantically, sobbing in fury at her own helplessness.

And at the sound of her voice, he raised his head, spitting water. His eyes were unfocused, not seeing her there, but he knew instinctively to reach out and swim in the direction of her screamed curses. With a renewed burst of enraged strength, she grabbed his shoulders and hauled him part way onto her rocking raft, until his head rested in her lap, getting blood on her gown. Only his legs still dangled in the restless sea.

"I just saved your rotten life, Bonnenfant," she cried against the wind. "You'd better be damned grateful."

He gurgled something into her lap, choking out seaweed.

"You can thank me later," she added, wondering if this storm would ever let up, because at this rate there would be no "later" for either of them.

* * * *

Thierry raised his aching head from her lap and looked around. His neck was stiff, his eyes sore, but as they came into focus he saw land at last, trees and grass, trails of smoke from rooftops.

Where were they? He had no idea how far or in which direction they'd drifted. What felt like days at sea had probably only been hours. The storm had departed some time since and left them bobbing along on their broken timber raft. He'd been awake for a while, but laid still with his head in her lap, just glad she was alive. So relieved to feel her body beneath his it was truly pitiful.

Now a small boat rowed out to them—fishermen on route to empty their nets. Today they would find not only fish, but two drenched, shivering souls clinging to one another, belched up from the depths of a deadly storm.

"We survived to live another day," said Thierry. To himself he thought,
I've been granted a reprieve, a second chance.

The woman said nothing. When she first dragged him up onto her raft, he'd seen the red marks on her wrists were the rope had chafed her skin and he remembered that he was the cause of it. Yet she had rescued him. She could easily have left him to drown. Now she yelled enthusiastically for the fishermen, waving her arms as if they might not see them there. He sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. There was no sign of anyone else in the water, no other wreckage.

He had lost
all
his men? Surely it could not be. His heart was heavy with grief. This was his fault. He'd insisted on sailing into the storm, like a rash, reckless fool. Now his loyal men had paid the price. Perhaps Vivienne was right. He was all brawn and breeches and no brains.

Self-loathing tore into his spirit just as the storm had ripped apart that boat. He could never forgive himself for this. All he had left now was this woman. She was his only chance to repent and make amends.

* * * *

They arrived in a small village, a community of no more than twenty five people, mostly fishermen, some farmers. They were simple folk with no overlord since the last one had died the year before with no sons to inherit. Apparently King William was too busy to pay much attention to this tiny outpost of civilization and had forgotten it for now.

"We're easily forgotten," said the cheery wife of the fisherman who rescued them, "until its time to collect taxes." She set two bowls of soup on the table and bade them eat. "You must be cold and hungry," she exclaimed. "Can't do naught on an empty stomach." She was a motherly lady, immediately kind to the strangers that drifted into her husband's nets. "Then we'll get you out of those wet things and find you something dry." She raised her voice to shout at her husband, "Find some breeches, Harold, for the young man here. And he'll need a belt to keep them up since you're plump as a barrel and he's...." her eyes twinkled as she let them stray over Thierry's arms and chest, "got that fine...well-hewn shape...yes indeed."

When the couple's pretty young daughter entered the cottage soon after with a bucket of milk, she too cast her eyes longingly over the tall, handsome man dripping saltwater all over her mother's clean-swept floor. Thierry smiled at her and she almost dropped her bucket.

Vivienne observed all this and rolled her eyes. She finished her bowl of soup and then another, too hungry to care how it tasted. Eating kept her busy, kept her from thinking of the wrecked boat, the people all swept away, their screams echoing through her mind. It had reminded her of the day her mother burned in the town square. As a girl of thirteen, slight of build, wild tempered and undernourished, she'd thrown herself at the soldiers who lit the faggots beneath her mother's feet. She'd even bitten a few of them through their clothing and drawn blood. But they'd shaken her off, thrust her aside easily. That same sense of helplessness and despair had come upon her in the storm. It had brought back the terrible stink of burning flesh and her mother's screams as the fire consumed her body. It was a horror Vivienne had held inside her for seven years, but in the cruel jaws of the storm it was unleashed again.

"I'd like to bathe," Thierry said suddenly. "Is there a tub I can use?"

The fisherman's daughter replied that they had one in the shed. She would gladly prepare it for him.

I bet you would
, Vivienne thought acidly. "I'll do that," she said. "There is no need for anyone else to have the trouble of drawing and heating water. Besides, we can share the bath."

Everyone looked at her as she finished her last spoonful of soup.

"Oh..." She smiled. "Did we not say? We are man and wife."

No other woman was going to get her hands on that man, she thought angrily. She'd saved him, hadn't she? Well, she hadn't saved him for some other woman's benefit.

She expected him to argue with her, deny her story. Instead he took her hand in his and kissed it. "Newlyweds," he said, grinning at the fisherman and his wife. "Just."

Immediately their hostess was all giggles and congratulations. The daughter looked distinctly disappointed. Thierry's hand tightened around hers and his smile became glazed, stuck to his face. When she tried to pull her hand away and reach for a cup of cider, he would not relinquish it.

Chapter Nine

"Husband and wife? Why would you tell them that?" He lowered himself into the bathtub, slowly relaxing in the warm water, letting the many knots in his tired limbs unwind.

She hung his wet things before the fire. "No doubt you wanted the fisherman's daughter to tend your bath instead. Sorry to disappoint you by stealing away the opportunity of yet another conquest."

He shook his head and wriggled a finger in his ear. They were still partly blocked it seemed from the seawater, or else this hard-hearted woman was making jealous noises. "We should make our way upward along the coast back to Hythe. It can't be too great a distance."

"I need to know what happened to the boat and my men," he added, head throbbing again as he thought of all those souls lost under his command.

"Yes," she murmured.

"It's my responsibility."

She brought a small cup over to the bath and knelt. Quietly she began to wash his hair, when he hadn't asked her to do it. A brief protest died on his tongue as the warm water swept over his weary face and washed the salt out of his hair. It was more soothing and reassuring to him in that moment than anything she could have said, but he didn't deserve comfort did he?

"We can't stay here," he said, his eyes closed. Another scoop of water dripped over his head.

"I know," she replied with a tiny sigh.

"Although I suppose we can stay one night." He was bone tired; heart, mind and body exhausted. She stroked his hair back. No one had washed his hair for him since he was a boy.

"Tell me about Bishop Ravillard," she said softly.

Thierry opened his eyes. "Should I not be the one asking
you
about him?"

She sat back on her heels, her fingertips trailing through the water. "He had my mother burned for witchcraft and then he became my guardian. I was thirteen."

He stared, watching her face and those features already so familiar to him. She had a slender nose, too fine for a peasant, and lips that were surely designed and carved by an artist of magical talents. Just looking at them he wanted to kiss her, even now, tired as he was. "You've worked for him ever since?"

"How many other men has he sent you to seduce?" The anger was still there, but muted now. Too much had happened that day for all this to matter as much as it did before. The Grim Reaper had cast his shadow over them both, come to take them, and then been thwarted by some lucky chance, or mischief, or divine intervention. Whatever it might be called. He didn't know what he believed in, or what he didn't anymore.

The answer she gave was indirect. "You were to be the last," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. "Then he promised me my freedom."

He should have pushed her for a proper answer, but he was very much aware that had he never met her, never chosen to take her with him on the boat that morning, he might not be alive now. Hearing her voice had spurred him into swimming for the raft, and her hands had tugged him out of the water just when his strength began to ebb. He would not have stayed afloat a second longer. She was special to him. Therefore he did not make her tell him how many men there had been before.

All that mattered was today. Not yesterday.

The nine lives of Thierry Bonnenfant had surely all been used up in that storm. His friend, Guy Devaux, used to tease him that he would run out one day. From now on he'd better be more circumspect and make the most of the time he had left.

"Now you must tell me your story," she pressed, her fingers moving up his chest, leaving little drips of water to roll down over his muscle.

He leaned back, closed his eyes and sighed. "Ravillard is my father."

Her hand withdrew. The sharp intake of her breath pierced the peaceful stillness of the cottage.

"I am illegitimate, of course. My mother was married to another—to Guillaume Bonnenfant—when she had an affair with the Bishop. The man who raised me never knew he was not my father. Neither did I, until Guillaume died and then my mother told me the truth."

Vivienne's fingers resumed their caress, but timidly, barely touching.

"You see, my father—the man I'd always thought was my father—left me an inheritance. A prosperous fiefdom in the Languedoc. As my mother pointed out to me, it was unfair that I should have it since I was not his true blood. She had no love for me. I was the child that reminded her of a shameful sin she'd sooner forget. She wanted my younger brothers to have the land, for they were Guillaume' real sons. It was only right and just, she said." He opened his eyes, captured Vivienne's wrist and brought it more firmly to his chest, placed her whole palm to his heart so she would feel how it drummed hard and fast. "I agreed with her. I relinquished the inheritance and left. I joined William of Normandy's soldiers and never went home again. When the Bishop found out that I'd given up my claim he was furious, wanted me to go back and fight my brothers for it. He wanted that fiefdom and through me he planned to get his hands on it."

She was watching him with wide eyes, drinking it all in. He'd told his story to only a very few people who were close to him. Not one of them was a woman, until now.

"But I would not feed his greedy appetite for land and power. I refused to do his bidding, wanted no part of his ambition, whatever he offered me. He's never forgiven me for that."

Her cheeks were flushed. She'd tied her hair back in a long tail, but one frond had escaped to curl willfully under her chin. Thierry raised his hand to her face and touched that lock of hair, curling it around his finger.