A Knight's Vow (14 page)

While she was occupied, tearing at the meat, Alyson was able
to free one hanging strip of leather jess that had become snared on a mesh of hawthorn spikes. Having no desire to be torn at
herself by that bright yellow beak, she called down to Guillelm.

“She will be able to fly now. Have you something you can
use as a lure?”

“No need!” Guillelm answered, for the merlin suddenly
swallowed a huge gobbet of meat and launched herself in a
stoop, falling like a fiery arrow through the tree branches,
straight back onto the bow perch she had been fastened to
all morning: a familiar, safe haven. When Alyson tossed
down the hood, Guillelm had already secured the bird and the
adventure was over.

Not quite over, for when Guillelm raised his golden head
to look at Alyson again, an “Excellent,” forming on his lips,
he stiffened, then began wildly pointing.

“What?” Alyson looked over herself and the branches she
was “walking” on and clinging to. Nothing to be alarmed of
here; no rotten boughs or wasps’ nests. She took another stepplummeting into empty space as the part of her gown that had
already snagged on an oak bole remained caught, throwing
her off-balance and pitching her off the gently swaying tree.
She heard a hoarse yell and then hit a shimmering mass of
blues, greens and browns, choking as ice-cold water poured
down her throat.

Praise Christ the river was here to break my tumble, was
her first thought, followed at once by the realization that she
was sinking. She thrashed and pounded but her shock-stiffened limbs would not answer her wishes; she went under
again, heavy, calm, unable to breathe.

Another yell, and a pair of strong tanned arms scooped her
out of the drowning murk.

“There, you are safe” Guillelm lifted her clear of the water.
“I have you, dear one, and all is well.”

He cradled her tightly, hoping she would not feel him shudder. He had seen the thorn branch hooking into her gown too
late. Watching her fall, helpless to save her, had been the
worst moments of his life. He had forgotten the river flowing beneath the oak how foolishly preoccupied he had been
with the merlin! A bird, when Alyson might have been lost.
He had heard her hit the water, then clawing through the undergrowth to the water’s edge, he had seen her slide into the
stream’s deep embrace. His Alyson was ever a fighter but she
seemed unable to stop herself being dragged under in a
deadly mesh of heavy skirts. Most eerie of all, a long, trailing
skein of hair bobbed on the top of the water. Never before had
he swum so rapidly, never in such terror.

Her small white hand was still hooked beneath his mantle,
clutching his sodden undershirt. Shiver after shiver ran through
her, though she did not seem to notice, whispering with her head
against the crook of his arm, “You have briared your face”

“You think that matters?” The cuts and weals that stung on
his nose and jaw, the result of beating desperately through the
web of ferns, alder saplings and God knows what else, were
nothing. “I saw you gone!”

“But you saved me” Wonder and gratitude warmed her voice
where Guillelm would have had her berate him for putting her
life in danger for a bundle of screeching feathers. For an instant
his arms clamped tighter still about her small, willowy form as
he thought of wringing the merlin’s neck, then decided there
would be more justice if he could wring his own.

“I was a fool!” he said.

“Then we both were, for I cannot swim.”

That stopped him in midrage, as she hoped it would.

“Truly?” He paused in midstream, his feet rocking on the river pebbles. “For all your clever book learning, there is
something I know that you do not?”

“Will you teach me?” The words were out before she could
drag them back. I must be more shaken than I thought, Alyson
reflected, appalled at her own question. Each time she was in
Guillelm’s arms she forgot herself; it was a dangerous habit.

“We should feed the merlin,” she went on, but the hawk,
which had been Guillelm’s great concern all that morning, no
longer was a distraction. He merely grinned at her in that way
of his that always made her feel as if her heart was suddenly
lifted and jammed into her throat, and he said lightly, “I will
tend the spoiled little brute, while you prepare yourself.” He
raised a thick gold eyebrow. “If you are certain you want me
to teach you. My men will tell you I am a lethal taskmaster.”
“Hard work never frightens me”

She was no longer shivering but languid in his arms, smiling at him with absolute trust. Guillelm had a sudden, disturbing vision of himself as tutor, pulling a squirming Alyson
over his lap while he applied a schoolmasterly discipline to
her pert backside. He flushed, ashamed of his thoughtsHeloise was surely right about him-and plucked at the
clinging sleeve of her gown.

“You cannot swim in that,” he remarked, determinedly
averting his eyes from her bodice. The water had sculpted
Alyson’s clothes to her closer than a second skin, making him
even more acutely conscious of his own aroused state. Fervently he wished the river was cold, blanketed with ice.

“What is the salve for earache?” he asked desperately as he
attacked the gently shelving slope of the riverbank. Perhaps
hearing her voice would bring him to reason, or at least be a
comfort. Part of him was still grasping the dreadful marvel of
her too-near escape from death.

“I have heard doctors swear by bloodletting and a tincture
of mercury, poured into the ear. But for myself, I have found
the gently warmed oil of the olive a good remedy.”

“And for backache?”

“A hot bath to start” Alyson broke off, frowning at her dripping plait and checking with a swift downward glance that she
had not lost her shoes. “Why all these cures? Are you going to
shout at me so much or make me swim this river to the sea?”

“Worse.” Guillelm deposited her onto the grass. “I am
going to make you as hungry as the hawk”

She chuckled, that warm, throaty giggle that made him
want to kiss her. “So ‘tis well Sir Tom gave us generous
provender. Do we eat first or later?”

“Later,” said Guillelm.

The day was warm-more than warm, blisteringly hot,
with a humidity that put Guillelm in mind of the East. It was
airless under the trees by the river, or perhaps that was just
him, he thought, as he kept busy, feeding the merlin, checking their horses, while Alyson shrugged off her soaking
gown. It was at least a good day for a new swimmer, he told
himself, tempted to ask if she needed help while he counted
moorhen and coots with their young; bits of dark fluff swimming earnestly along the far riverbank. In these shallows the
water would be perfect.

He heard her splash into the river and swallowed, his ears
buzzing with heat and barely thwarted desire.

“I am ready.” She was sculling the water with her hands.
Would she be naked? No, for she was already growing nervous, perhaps even regretting her impulsive suggestion.
“Guillelm, do you think this is right? I mean, is it seemly?”

“Why not?” He turned to reassure her and almost laughed: Alyson had sat down in the shallows and he could see little of
her. “We are, after all, betrothed”

“I have spread my gown on the hazel to dry.” She pointed
and he could see she was still wearing her undershift, a
modest choice. “Will you swim as you are?”

“My stuff dries fast” His clothes were little enough of a
barrier but they were something, a reminder he needed that
Alyson was an innocent. Or is she? muttered Fulk in the
baser recesses of his mind, a thought he resolutely thrust
away. He strode to the river, willing himself to be a perfect
gentle knight while he felt anything but chivalrous.

Be a lady, Alyson thought, both relieved and disappointed
when Guillelm stalked into the river fully clothed. He was so
swift-moving when he needed to be that she forgot his size, but
now he was beside her again he towered over her, an eagle to
her merlin. And how that gift of Sir Tom’s had caused trouble!
They were a good half mile or more off the recognized track
through these woods and both of them had endured a wetting.
Fulk will wonder what we have been doing, she thought, but
then she forgot him in the face of Guillelm’s grim stare. Perhaps he dislikes this, perhaps I have been too forward. The
fears scurried through her mind like dandelion clocks blowing in the breeze as she tried not to shrink from him.

“Peace, girl.” Kneeling in the water beside her, he had spotted her slight movement. Alyson, knowing him sensitive to the
point of wariness over her possible dread of him, was tempted
to slap the river back into his scowling face, to prove she was in
no way scared. Had she been younger she might have done so,
but at one and twenty she knew she ought to have more finesse.

“Did you swim the rivers in Outremer?” Not a very original question, but when Guillelm was apt to make her tonguetied Alyson was proud she had managed so much.

“There are no such streams as these in the East” An evasive answer, made more mysterious by the ready stain of color
that bloomed along Guillelm’s jaw line and chin. “What is
that strange scent? Like a spice or perfume”

He did not think it was anything to do with her, Alyson
noted, disappointed, but she breathed in deeply. “It is fennel,”
she answered, nodding toward the bank where a stand of the
tall, yellow flowers swayed among the cobwebbed beauty of
the white elder blossom. “I use it in eye baths and for the
colic. I dare say you have forgotten it, being so long away.”

“And those birds?” he asked, but there was a gleam in his
eyes that made Alyson click her tongue.

“Ducks, and you know it, you big oaf.”

“Oaf, am I?” He lifted his feet from the river pebbles and
stretched, floating full length on his back on the sparkling,
tranquil surface. “Can you do this?”

She set to his challenge at once, only to sink as she tried to
follow his example, wallowing in an ignominious stream of
bubbles onto the sandy base of the stream.

“Steady, little swimmer. Up with you” Two hands buoyed
her to the surface, their strong palms supporting her across
her shoulder blades and the small of her back. “Relax. Imagine you are a bird and this water is the air beneath your wings.
It will carry you easily. See?”

She was floating, the blood-warm water eddying round her
limbs. Feeling safe, she closed her eyes, dimly aware that
Guillelm had lowered the hand beneath her back.

“There,” he said.

“This is marvelous,” she said. “It is like reading a new book!”

“Only you would compare such things.” His tone was indulgent. “I would have said riding a fresh horse, or petting a
new dog”

The hand beneath her shoulder blades swept down the
length of her spine and away. Alyson’s eyes flew open and, with considerably less grace than her partner in the water, she
put her feet down hastily, sighing with relief as her bare toes
dug into the sand.

“Over with you.” Guillelm gave her no time to protest,
catching her round the middle and turning her, resting her
stomach on his bent knee and saying, “Put your arms like
this-that is good! Now work them so”

He showed her and she copied his movements. They
paused a moment while he explained how to kick her legs and
then she tried again.

“I am swimming!” she cried, delighted at her progress.

“Something, certainly,” Guillelm answered, amused by her
jerky dog-paddling and making sure he had her safe at all
times. If he released her now, she would drop like a stone and
he did not want her to lose confidence.

But she was a distracting thing and she did not even know it.
Her linen undershift had turned half-transparent in the water,
molding to her limbs in a way an Eastern harem beauty might
envy. Attempting a churning, uncoordinated breaststroke on
her front displayed her wildly kicking haunches and shapely
legs to best advantage, while her breasts, cupped teasingly by
the water and shown off by her beguilingly arched neck, were
soft mounds he ached to caress. Their nipples were pink, he
thought, although he was not entirely sure and did not trust
his own countenance or continence to sneak a closer look.

He knelt again on the river bottom, gently withdrawing his
hand from her trim stomach. Even through the water and
linen, her skin was smooth and flawless as the inside of a
freshly split apple and smelled as sweet, as good to taste. It
would be so easy, to brush his fingers that was outside his role as teacher, for now at least. Trust was everything,
as Alyson herself proved, swimming three genuine strokes as
he came round in front of her, stretching out his arms.

“Hang on,” he coaxed. “I will give you a lift.”

She caught his hands willingly in hers and he drew her
along, swimming on his back and praying there were no overhanging branches for him to blunder into and sink them both.
“Do you like it?” he called.

She laughed, showing her white even teeth, giggling more
as he accelerated in the water. “It is flying!”