After the Storm (26 page)

"Well, I'll be," she murmured. She ruffled fingers through his hair. "What a clever fellow you are, and you don't even know it."

He made a small sound, a cross between a moan and a question. She wanted to hold him and make comforting noises, but that wouldn't get the arrow out. "Just hold still, and we'll get this over with, babe."

Babe. Now who was it she used to call babe? Never mind. She didn't have time to do the amnesiac routine right now.

She applied a tiny shot of anesthetic to his arm, and talked while she waited for it Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

to work. "'Now the Mongols," she told the mostly unconscious man, "the Mongols know about silk. And they know about archery. They are a bunch of warrior tribes off on the Asian plains. That's what I do. I study the Devil's Horsemen. That's what the West will be calling the Mongols in a few years, after Temujin—that's Genghis Khan to you—consolidates his power and gets the conquests started. Anyway, the Mongol army has this very sensible rule, which brings me back to silk. Every soldier has to wear a silk shirt under his armor as a protection against arrow wounds."

Bastien groaned again. She began to work the silk-wrapped arrowpoint out of his arm. Carefully, very carefully. With the help of the silk it came out easily enough. She hurried to apply disinfectant, and then bandaged it. She finished with another concentrated shot, an emergency combination of antibiotic and painkiller.

When she was done she eased Bastien down to lie on the barn floor, and stuffed hay under his head until he looked comfortable. Then she got up, brushed her sweaty hands against her still damp skirts and walked out of the barn. She'd done a fast, efficient job of dressing the wound, and thought she had earned the right to go outside and throw up.

"I was never meant to be a medic," she confided to the night when she stepped out the door. She didn't throw up, but she did lean against the wall, close her eyes, and breathe in large gulps of cool, evening air. She looked up at the sky.

The clouds were clearing, leaving open great patches of starry sky. She smiled up at them while something nagged at the back of her mind, it was something about silk.

She always wore silk next to her skin. It had to do with hard lessons learned while working in Asia, sometimes within an arrow's flight of bands of Mongol warriors.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

"So many stars here." she murmured as questions rolled around in her mind.

"Not like at home with all the light pollution. Not as many stars here as the night sky over the steppes, though, where there's hardly any people. It's not as lonely here." A smile came to her lips as she thought of Bastien. She hadn't been lonely at all since she'd met the outlaw. Frustrated, furious, intrigued, tempted—more than tempted—but not lonely.

Why did Bastien wear silk next to his skin?

She remembered the smooth, rich feel of it as her hands moved across his chest and back. She remembered it against her cheek, the slippery sound of the cloth mixed with the steady thrum of his heartbeat as she cradled her head upon his chest to sleep.

Her head was beginning to hurt.

Why did Bastien wear silk like a Mongol warrior?

Where had an English outlaw learned that trick?

Her head felt like an egg someone was trying to crack from the inside.

She felt like a jigsaw puzzle that was assembling itself at light speed. She couldn't catch the pattern yet because she was the pattern and the pattern was coming at her at a thousand miles an hour. It was going to hurt like hell when it hit.

Libby slipped to her knees, and the darkness of the English countryside exploded around her. The present escaped her attention as her past rushed in to drown her in minute, intricate, impossible detail.

She bent forward until her forehead touched the cool, wet ground. It felt good. It felt real. She pressed her hands into thick clumps of grass. That was real, too.

She was real. She was dizzy, light-headed, but her head didn't hurt anymore. She knew it would never hurt like that again. She didn't know how long she'd been Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

kneeling in the grass, but the pain was finally, permanently, gone.

All because Bastien wore silk.

Because he'd been wounded by an arrow.

She knew why she'd kept having dreams about Mongolia.

She knew everything, remembered every detail of the four missing years of her life. She knew how the time accident had happened, and why, and who was responsible.

She straightened to look at the stars once more. For some reason she started to laugh. After a while she began to cry. With grief and anger at first, but then her tears changed to those of relief. She had her memory back. She decided to just be grateful for that for a while. She stood up and went to check on Bastien.

"Bastien." The word was a cross between a curse and a question.

This wasn't over yet, and it was more complicated than she had imagined it could be. Bastien was very much a part of it.

"He better live," she murmured. "So I can kill him with my own two hands."

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Chapter 14

"Where am I?"

"1227."

There was something about the caustic tone of Isabeau's voice that made Bastien regret having woken up. She prodded him in the side, with her foot, he thought.

He wasn't sure he wanted to open his eyes and find out. He could feel her annoyance, it covered him like an invisible blanket. What had he done to make her so angry? Other than abducting her, holding her prisoner and forcing his will on her? Was she regretting having willingly gone along with all of it?

"Wake up."

It was a cold anger, he judged by the frosty sound of her words. So whatever was bothering her was something she'd had time to think about through the hours he'd slept. Slept. Bastien wondered why his arm didn't hurt. And why he felt so well rested. And where they were. He sat up slowly, before he opened his eyes.

He carefully moved his arm, as he concentrated on how it felt.

"It'll be sore for a few days, but it isn't bad."

His senses agreed with her judgment of the injury. He was going to be all right.

How? Had the noblewoman taken time to nurse the outlawed peasant? Was that why she was annoyed, because she'd been forced to perform such a humble task?

Perhaps that was the cause of her anger, but he doubted it. She could have left him to die, but he remembered her determinedly helping him to safety instead.

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Maybe he'd better try to find out what was really wrong instead of making up excuses for her behavior.

He nodded, and opened his eyes. They were in a large structure, with sunlight filtering in from the open door. Isabeau was standing in the patch of sunlight, glaring down at him with her arms crossed under her bosom. She looked tired and bedraggled, and wonderful. He smiled.

"What are you looking at?"

Smiling obviously wasn't the proper response this morning. "You're beautiful,"

he told her as he got to his feet as quickly as he could.

She looked him over from head to foot, eyes blazing. He stood still and let her, and he kept smiling because he couldn't help it. He was happy to be alive, happy to be with her.

In love.

The knowledge hit him like a lightning bolt and he immediately pushed it away.

"What's wrong with you, hellcat?" he asked, instead of telling her what he felt for her.

Abruptly, her evil glower turned into a bright smile. She put her hands on her hips. "You really don't know do—"

Her words broke off as she snatched up his bow and whirled toward the door.

He'd heard the noise too. As he drew his dagger he was grateful the arrow had hit his left arm. He might be hurt, but at least he could still fight. "Stay back," he whispered to her, but she was already at the door. Damn. He followed quickly, meaning to push her behind him.

Instead she relaxed as he reached her and murmured a disgusted, "Oh, for God's sake."

Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

Her two wretched deerhounds came bounding in the door as she spoke.

Libby gave a breathy laugh and went down on her knees. She rubbed the enthusiastic animals' sleek fur from ears to tail as they wove and squirmed around her. She wasn't sure if she was happy to see Luke and Leia or if she was just so relieved that they weren't a group of sword-wielding warriors that she needed to hug something.

She wanted to hug the man standing so nearby, but didn't think that would be such a good idea at the moment. They had to work some things out first. For once she wished she had a therapist with her, someone who'd know the right questions to ask, how to direct conversation to get at information. Well, she didn't have a therapist with her.

Besides, it hadn't been the shrinks at Time Search who'd helped her get her memory back. Bastien had been her trigger. She would be his. That was why she'd run away to find him. She certainly couldn't back out of that commitment now. And she would try not to be furious until he fully understood what she had to be angry about.

She pushed the dogs away and got to her feet. They turned their attention to Bastien. So did she. "They like you
." I like you, you bastard. More than like you
.

"They followed us," he answered. He looked worried even as he scratched Luke's and Leia's ears. "I hope no one followed them."

"Me too. The village is really quiet," she told Bastien. She picked up the bow and slipped the strap of the quiver over her shoulder.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Going hunting."

"You're doing no such thing."

She couldn't help but smile at the combination of protectiveness and machismo Sizemore, Susan - After the Storm

radiating from him. It made her feel all warm and wanted. Not that she was going to let him have his way, of course. "You've lost blood, you could use a high-protein meal. I won't be long. These are hunting dogs, time they did some work."

He stepped in front of her. "I forbid you to leave this—" He looked around.

"Where are we?"

"Blackchurch," she answered. "The parish tithe barn, I think. I had a look around before you woke up."

"You did what?"

"I wasn't seen. No one is in the fields this morning. I heard church bells, so maybe it's some important saint's day and everyone's worshipping."

Blackchurch. The knowledge seeped through him as dark fear. Not for himself, but for Isabeau. He took her by the arm. "We have to get out of here. Those bells," he told her before she could argue, "were calls to a funeral Mass. There's a plague here. We have to get out."

"An epidemic?" she asked. "What is it?"

"A fever," he said. Her intense question told him she was more tempted to nurse the sick than to sensibly run away. He wished there was something they could do to help, but knew it was useless. He cursed the helplessness, but wouldn't expose her to danger. "I never get ill, but I won't take you near the sickness."

"Damn it, Bas, I've got medicine! Maybe I could—"

He pointed toward her small bundle of possessions. "Could you dose a whole village?"