Never Kiss A Stranger (23 page)

“What is it, Piers? Did Ira say something to upset you?”

Ira. The old man’s name was Ira.

“My ring,” he managed to whisper.

“Your ring?” Alys’s face scrunched into a confused frown. “Do you want me to fetch it for you? Where is it?”

Piers tried to shake his head and his eyes went to the stool where the old man had been sitting.

… it once belonged to my daughter, now dead a score and four years.

A score and four years ago, Piers had been six years old.

“Piers?”

He was staring at an old, three-legged stool on the far side of his makeshift bed. For several moments, he said nothing. Then at last he turned his head toward her.

“Nothing,” he whispered. His eyes roved her face, her shoulders. “Layla?”

“She’s taken a fancy to a particular village girl,” Alys said with a wry smile. “I must admit I’m rather jealous, even though the child is a delight. How are you feeling?”

“Poorly,” he admitted, his voice faint and his eyes far away now, as he turned his gaze to the ceiling above.

Alys nodded. “I’ve met Linny—the woman caring for you. She told me that you have a fever in your hand where Layla bit you, and that it’s spread to your blood.”

Piers blinked, but said nothing. Part of Alys wanted to explain to him how serious his condition was, how frightened for him she was, but she recognized that her desire to share the burden of his illness was entirely selfish, and so restrained herself, and only gave him the optimistic part of Linny’s opinion.

“She’s drained the wounds, dressed them with a salve
that will draw the poison out. You’ll rest here, try to eat and drink and sleep as much as possible, and you shall be well soon.”
We hope,
she added to herself.

“How long?” Piers whispered, the question meant for her, but his words were directed toward the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. His face looked so gaunt in the darkness of the tree house, Alys felt a shiver flutter over her. “I don’t think anyone could know yet.”

“I must get to London.” His eyes closed.

“You will. We will,” she emphasized.

“Not without my ring,” Piers said. “The old man has it.”

Fury sprang to life in Alys. “Ira stole your father’s ring?”

Piers nodded, his chin barely twitching downward.

“That miserable old thief!” Alys rushed to her feet. “I’ll get it back for you Piers, I swear. I’ll—”

He held his right hand up slightly from the ticking. “Alys,” he whispered.

“No! He cannot think to take advantage of you while he has us both as little more than his prisoners! How dare he?” Alys seethed.

“Alys,” Piers said, raising his voice to a raspy hark. He fell into a coughing fit, and Alys rushed back to her knees, her hand supporting his back.

“I’m sorry, Piers—I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.” She tried to think what her sister, Cecily, would do in this situation. When he began to calm, she reached for a hollowed gourd resting in a bucket of water. “Here, have a drink to soothe your throat.”

“Thank you.”

She replaced the dipper, pleased that she had done something right for once. Piers leaned back onto the ticking, his face pale save for the two scarlet patches on his sunken cheeks. Alys could see the sheen of sweat through the stubble on his jaw and neck.

“Will you still carry on with me to London?”

Alys swallowed, tried to quell the rush of emotion she felt. “To London, yes. To the very ends of the earth, Piers. Even should we fall off the edge and land in God’s palm, with you is where I want to be.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Why?”

It was too soon, Alys knew. He would think that she was still the spoiled child he accused her of being, rushing to cling to him. But Alys knew how dire his condition was, and how it was equally as likely that he would die in this wood rather than carry on. She wanted to tell him how she felt in her heart. And he needed to hear it, whether he believed her or nay.

“Because I love you, Piers.”

He turned his face back to the ceiling and was silent for several moments, his chest rising and falling with his shallow breaths. “Will you do something for me?”

He hadn’t returned the sentiment, and in truth, Alys hadn’t expected him to. It was enough that he had not chided her for speaking the words aloud.

“Anything,” she insisted.

She saw his throat work as he swallowed and forced the raspy words past his lips. “Find the old man.”

“Yes, alright. I have a few coins left in my bag—shall I buy your ring back from him?”

He looked at her once more, his eyes full of dumbfounded accusation. “You have money?”

“Not much, but yes.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

Alys gave him a smile. “You didn’t ask.”

He gave a short sigh. “No. Ask him not of the ring. Just send him to me. Alone. I need to speak with him alone.”

Alys winced. “Are you certain that’s wise? He’s a stranger to you, Piers. And he’s obviously already upset
you greatly this morn. You need your rest.” She didn’t trust the old man any farther than she could pitch his stringy body from the tree. Less, actually.

“He won’t harm me,” he said solemnly. “Will you send him to me?”

Alys thought a moment before answering. “Yes. Yes, I will do as you ask.” She hesitated at first, but then let her fingers slide beneath his palm. She squeezed.

Piers’s fingers twitched weakly. But that was all.

“Shall I go now, or would you rest a while first?”

“Now. Better to get it over with.” He turned his face to hers. “I know I might die, Alys.”

She shook her head, fought the tears that threatened. She squeezed his hand again. “No. Linny said—”

“Likely a great deal more than you are telling me,” he finished for her. “Working a farm, I understand the seriousness of a blood fever better than most would. I promise I shall do my best to improve, though.”

She gave him a smile that she knew must be watery. “You always do.”

“You hold a high opinion of me,” he said, and his mouth crooked wryly. “A lot to live up to.”

She raised her left palm to smooth over his forehead and the top of his scalp. He was running with perspiration. She leaned over and pressed her lips to his fevered brow. “See that you do. You know how we titled ladies are—you must live. I command it.”

Then Alys was nearly certain that Piers did squeeze her hand.

“Go,” he said, sliding his fingers free from her grasp. “I will send for you after.”

Alys swallowed hard. “As you wish it, Piers. I’ll be waiting below for when you call me.” She rose and turned to go.

“Alys.”

She turned back, her heart springing with foolish hope. Would he now tell her he loved her too?

“Yes?”

“Are we in a tree?”

“They are here.” Sybilla stared through the gray morning light at the darker gray tree trunks, her mount shifting nervously under her. She stilled the stallion with a touch on his neck. Although no stable master would dare chastise her, Sybilla knew the horsemen of Fallstowe thought her choice of mount dangerous: a dappled destrier with a skittish nature and barely better than wild. But he was powerful, and sensitive to the very air he breathed, and he and Sybilla trusted each other.

The soldier standing nearest her slipper looked up from the remnants of a fire to which the increasingly wild and haphazard trail had led. “Indeed, my lady—there was a camp here. The coals are cold, but the ground beneath still holds a bit of heat.”

Sybilla nudged gently with her heels and leaned to the right. Octavian obeyed immediately. Sybilla let her eyes roam the ground as her horse carried her in a wide circuit around the perimeter of the clearing. There was little else to see save for a litter of nutshells dusted with snow. She breathed deep, trying to taste the air on the back of her throat. She squeezed her thighs and her horse came to a stand.

“What is the nearest village, and how far?”

“No place of significance until the abbey at St. Albans, milady, perhaps five miles from here.”

They hadn’t gone on to St. Albans, Sybilla was certain. The fire was too cold to have gone out with the rising
sun, and they wouldn’t have tried to breach the thickness of wood in the middle of the night with blowing snow upon them. Any trail they might have left was now largely covered over with white. It was as if Alys had been spirited away from the earth, snatched up into the air by invisible hands. There must be shelter elsewhere in this wood. Hidden shelter.

“Make camp here. They came less than a quarter of the distance in one day than they have previously. Someone is wounded or ill. Something is slowing them. They are here,” she repeated, almost to herself this time.

The soldier nodded and began barking orders to his underlings, directing the search. Sybilla urged Octavian away from the camp slowly, letting the stallion drop his head as he wandered. But his mistress was alert, her gaze taking in the tiny dust motes, the color of the moss on the trees, the lean of the trunks.

Where are you, Alys?

“Ready to tell me the truth now, are you, friend?” The old man took his time lowering his bony backside to the stool once more, his hands bracing on his knees. The signet ring was nowhere to be seen.

“You say that ring belonged to your daughter,” Piers began. “And I say it belongs to me. There is little chance that the object possesses a twin, would you agree?”

The old man nodded once. “Aye.”

“I think you lie. I think you have stolen
my
ring with intentions of selling it on your own.”

“I told you that
my daughter’s
ring will never leave my possession, and that is my solemn vow,” the old man said in a careless manner. “Your belief of it or nay makes little difference to me.”

“You do not look as though any in your family would be of means to possess such a jewel.” Piers forced himself to continue breathing easily, lest another coughing fit overtake him. “Convenient solution, that she’s dead and cannot claim such valuable property herself. Clever.”

“It’s not convenient for me that my daughter is dead, you lying, sickly bastard,” Ira hissed through his teeth. “Further comments of that nature will find you a ready grave.”

“When?” Piers asked without comment to the threat.

“When what? When will I kill you?”

“Tell me again when she died.”

Ira’s jaw worked, as if his mouth was trying to prevent the words from escaping. “A score and four years ago. My only grandson with her.”

Piers closed his eyes for a long moment.

“Buying time until you can think of some way to trick me out of my girl’s ring?” Ira accused in a pained, growling voice from beyond Piers’s eyelids. The old man’s words grew louder, as if he leaned toward Piers. “My very
life
was stolen from me! All I can hope for now is a bit of peace in these woods in which we hide, and now this—the only thing that is left of the girl I loved so. One whom I betrayed and never had chance to make amends to.”

Piers opened his eyes. Ira was in the process of leaning back on his stool. His rapidly rising and falling chest and the steely glint in his eyes the only evidence of his fury.

“Would you tell me about her?”

Ira’s busy eyebrows drew downward, and his gaze flicked away to the floor.

“You have the ring,” Piers reasoned, trying to keep his raspy voice neutral. Nothing was certain yet. “You have said yourself that I am in no condition to take it from you. Tell me the story of this daughter you betrayed, and say
no names, no places. I must know the tale of a ring such as that one, which I thought to be mine by rights, less than a month ago, when it was given to me.”

“So now someone
gave
you the ring, and that’s how it came to be in your possession?” the man mocked.

“That’s right,” Piers said levelly.

“Who gave it to you?” Ira demanded.

“Tell your tale, old man. And at the end of it, I will answer you what you have asked me.”

“You only seek information so that you might justify your thievery.”

“You will tell me no names,” Piers reiterated. “Not even that of your daughter. But
I
will answer
you
with a name, and that is my solemn vow.”

Ira seemed to be debating Piers’s bargain in his head, and so Piers asked, “Does any other know this tale?”

“Not the whole of it,” Ira admitted quietly.

“Tell it,” Piers said.

Ira was quiet for a very long time before he finally began to speak.

“I came with … my girl, to”—he paused for a moment—“to a new manor with our village’s mistress. The lady was to marry the lord of the manor, and I was part of the bargain.” Ira tapped his gray temple. “My knowledge, for the farm. I was the best in the land. All the houses sought me, tried to buy me. My learning was worth more than this.” He patted his vest, and Piers suspected the signet ring lay inside, over the man’s tired old heart.

Ira clasped his hands in a loose fist and let them dangle between his knees as he stared at the floor and continued. “The new marriage was not a good one. The lady was a shrew, demanding—never content with all she had. The lord regretted his pact with her father before a moon had ripened over their marriage bed.

“I recall so clearly the day he saw … my daughter. We were in the barn, and she—not quite seventeen yet—was helping me with an animal what had took sick.” Ira’s eyes had flicked to Piers’s. “We thought we’d have to put the animal down, that mayhap the disease was a catching one, and so the lord come down to see himself. She was a beautiful girl.”

Ira was quiet for a moment. “The lord saw her comeliness right away, of course. He coaxed her into speaking to him—she was a shy one. Wouldn’t say geddoff to a flea. And she was taken by him, his title, his money, his attention to her, a poor man’s daughter.

“The lord gave her a position in the house, to attend his wife who had only just borne a child. I should have known then. I should have, and maybe I did, although I denied it to myself for far too long. By the time I realized what was going on beneath my very nose—and the lady’s nose, too—it was too late. My daughter was carrying his babe.”