White Lion's Lady (22 page)

The sad truth was, Griffin was a born leader. Even through his blinding animosity for him, Dom could see that plain fact. In another place, under other circumstances, Griffin might have been a great man, capable of great things. But he’d had the misfortune of arriving on Droghallow’s doorstep twenty-five years ago, and if anyone was to blame for what became of him while there, Dom was of the mind that it was Alys, not him, who should have shouldered that guilt. After all, it was she who took him in. She who pretended to know nothing of his origins when in fact he was blood kin to her—the son of a highborn cousin, a babe sent away in secret to be raised by the barren Alys and her devoted husband.

This knowledge came to Dom quite by chance, upon his discovery of a cache of correspondence hidden away by his stepmother and not unearthed until a few weeks after her
death. Dom had ordered her chamber cleared of all belongings, a task nearly completed when a maid came to him with a small coffer she had found hidden behind a loose stone in Alys’s chamber wall.

“I don’t know how I missed it until now,” the maid had said when Dom broke open the box to see what it contained. “Lady Alys must have kept it hidden there all along, right under our noses.”

Dom expected to find some manner of treasure secreted inside, something to warrant Alys’s care in concealing the sturdy wooden container. Though he had not discovered gold, he had found a boon of another sort, for inside was a collection of letters. Hundreds of them. One for each month that Griffin was at Droghallow, lovingly penned by a mother who missed her son and lived each day with the guilt of sending him away.

Dom wasn’t sure if his father had been aware of Griffin’s true parentage. He rather doubted the old man would have cared. Griffin was all the son that Dom could never be: strong and hale, equally adept with both sword and wit. If he had not died so unexpectedly, Robert of Droghallow might have been tempted to take steps to entrust Griffin with his properties instead of Dom. Just thinking on that likely prospect was enough to cause Dom’s blood to boil anew.

The way Dom saw it, Griffin had robbed him of his father’s affection. If not for his arrival, the earl might have been able to eventually find room in his heart for the weakling son of his first wife. He might have been able to take some measure of pride in him, might have been able to love him just a little. By design or nay, Griffin had stolen Dom’s place in his own household, and for too long, Dom had been seeking repairs for that offense.

He had gained some satisfaction toward that end by reading every letter Griffin’s mother had written. It had taken hours to wade through them all and when he was finished,
Dom burned them that very same day, knowingly denying Griffin the information, confident that he would find a use for it one day on his own.

And so he had, the day he learned of Prince John’s want to stop a certain noble marriage.

This last task—the kidnap of the Montborne bride—would have all but evened the score. Indeed, when Dom had first heard about the pending union, and Prince John’s want to thwart it, he could not have offered his services fast enough. Griffin was his natural choice—his only choice—for the mission.

“You have my word,” Dom told the prince now, breaking out of his reflection to meet the cold gray stare of John Plantagenet. “Griffin and the woman will be apprehended. There is no one who is more determined to see this deed through to fruition than myself.”

Not even you
, he amended silently as he bowed before his royal conspirator and was granted his leave.

Isabel remained mercifully unconscious for the time it took Griffin to find them feasible shelter so he could look after her wound. The only asylum to be had was in the woods outside Derbyshire, in a deep cavern notched between two massive slabs of lichen-covered granite. Adequate at best, but well hidden. Griff dismounted to make a quick check of the place, then, satisfied with its state of total vacancy, he went back to his waiting mount to fetch Isabel.

Carrying her in his arms, his horse’s lead in one hand, Griff ventured into the cave. A flat expanse of dry rock would have to serve as Isabel’s pallet as he tended her. Griff set her down as gently as he could, positioning her where there was the best light. This far back in the cavern, sunlight was a meager, fleeting thing. It squeezed in through the cave’s narrow mouth, stretching in like a hag’s finger, a milky nimbus that would be all but vanished in a matter of an hour.

Griff made haste to use his time to best advantage, bringing together what few tools he had to work with and returning to kneel at Isabel’s side.

Even in the dim light of the cavern, he could see the grim evidence of the bolt’s damage. Isabel’s blood stained the deep blue wool of her mantle where the torn fabric pressed against her injured arm, a thickening patch of wet blackness that set a knot of fear in Griffin’s throat. With
care not to disturb her, he lifted the edge of the cloak away, then grasped the sleeve of Isabel’s gown as gingerly as he could and rent it at the shoulder seams.

His breath hissed out of him when he saw the ravaged patch of skin laid bare.

It seemed such a heinous violation, so incongruous, that terrible, ragged ugliness marring the pale perfection of her skin. At least the arrow had only grazed her. Had she leaped any farther into its path, the bolt would have impaled her upper arm, a grim thought Griff refused to ponder for long. Steeling himself to what must be done, he reached over to retrieve his saddle pack from the floor beside him.

He pulled a wineskin from within the pouch, cursing when he realized it could contain no more than a couple of swallows. Better than none at all, he decided, but he still needed a length of cloth with which to bind her arm once it was cleaned. He grabbed up the hem of her rumpled mantle then threw it aside in frustration. Wool would only breed festering; the best bandage would be of breathable fabric.

Griff’s gaze slid back to the fine silk gown Isabel wore. The voluminous skirts were soiled and torn from her fall, but beneath the mantle clasped together at her throat, the bodice of the dress was still a pristine white. It would have to suffice. Griff knelt down and untied the laces that bound the garment’s neckline together above Isabel’s breasts, then paused. There would be no easy way to get her out of the gown without jostling her and he was loathe to add to her discomfort. Left no other choice, he drew a dagger from a sheath on his belt, slipped the blade beneath the thin fabric and efficiently sliced the bliaut open from neck to hem.

How different it was to look upon her nudity now, he thought. The sight of her naked body inspired an ache in him that went deeper than lust or wanting. What he felt when he looked upon her in that moment was nothing short
of a burning, heartsick brand of guilt. A profound humility. Raw emotions, so foreign to him that he found it hard to keep from turning away from her. But he forced himself to remain unflinching as he reached out and lifted her arm out to the side where he could better work on her wound.

He uncorked his wineskin and poured a small portion of the claret over the worst part of the gash. Isabel jerked the instant the wine touched her skin. She gave an incoherent whimper, her closed eyelids fluttering. Griff knew the pain he was inflicting on her; he had tended his own battle injuries often enough to know the fiery kiss of wine on an open wound. But it was a necessary measure, and he could only pray that Isabel’s senses would remain mercifully dulled for a while longer as he finished.

Waiting for her fretful stirring to subside, he grasped her wrist to steady her arm as he applied a second dose to the cut. This time Isabel cried out in earnest.

Her eyes flew open, wide with fright and glossy with disorientation. “Please … nooo,” she moaned. Her wounded arm went tight in Griffin’s grasp, her outflung hand fisting, her fingernails sinking into the fleshy pinkness of her palm. The wiry tendons in her wrist strained beneath her skin as she struggled against Griffin’s firm hold.

“Shh,” he whispered, placing his free hand gently against her brow when her head began to thrash from side to side. “ ’Tis all right, Isabel, I promise.”

“It hurts,” she hissed through a grimace of agony.

“I know it does, but I’m almost done.” He swept aside a lock of damp hair that fell onto her brow, wishing he could as easily sweep aside her pain. “Close your eyes,” he told her gently. “Try to sleep, angel.”

Griff was unsure where the endearment came from—he had never been the sort of man to bother with sweet words or meaningless courtly gestures—but hearing it seemed to soothe Isabel, and so he said it again, repeating his soft command and stroking her hair until her eyelids finally
drooped closed once more. He finished dressing her arm as quickly as he could, completing the process with a strip of clean silk taken from her bodice and wrapped around the cut to bind it and staunch the bleeding. He tied off the ends of the bandage and sat back on his heels, his spine pressed against the stone wall of the cavern, watching as she fell into an exhausted slumber.

For what seemed the thousandth time, Griffin relived the moment Isabel had delivered herself into the arrow’s path. Too late, he had seen it heading straight for him, a speeding blur of hard wood and razor-sharp steel—certain death. And then Isabel had suddenly cut into the line of fire, a deliberate act that placed herself between him and the bowman’s bolt.

Griff still could hardly believe it. He had never seen such courage in all his days …

Not true, his conscience chided. There had been a time, once before, when he had witnessed the sort of courage and honor that Isabel displayed. And he had destroyed it.

At Hexford, when he told Isabel about the reeve’s daughter and what Dom had done to her, he had been careful to leave out the events that came next, some few short months later, after Sir Robert was dead and Dom had been made earl. He didn’t tell her about the day Dominic found out about his father’s gesture of kindness to the woman and her new husband. He didn’t tell her how irate Dom had been to learn that some of Droghallow’s money—now his money—was being used to support a couple of commoners.

Griffin didn’t tell Isabel that as captain of the garrison, he was enlisted to accompany his lord to the village when Dom decided to eject the couple from their cottage and burn it down in spite. Nor did he tell her that when Dom attempted to seize the woman bodily, and her husband stepped in to protect her, it was he, Griffin, who was obligated
to draw his weapon in defense of his lord. It was he who stood between the man and Dom, he who held him off when the cottar drew a knife and lunged for his wife’s assailant.

And it was he, Griffin, who slayed that good man, killing for the first time. He had been physically sick with the act, knowing that he had just murdered a man whose only crime was acting out of courage and honor to come to the aid of someone he loved. The sacrifice had been such a waste; it had not spared his wife from Dom in the end.

So often Griff wished that he had turned his blade on Dom instead. But he hadn’t, and he’d spent the rest of his years at Droghallow regretting that failure. Because of his pledge to Sir Robert, he stayed at Droghallow, carrying out his tasks as head of the guard in a state of emotional numbness, an apathy that had thoroughly consumed him … until the day he was reunited with Isabel. She made him feel again. She made him hope. Being with her made him better somehow.

Looking at the blood that stained his hands and tunic from her wound—blood spilled because of her own courage and honor—he could not help acknowledging how completely he was failing her. No more, he vowed. She had trusted in him once. She had believed in him. He meant to prove to her that she could do so again. Her sacrifice would not be for naught.

Griffin eyed her bandaged arm with a judicious eye. The wound was going to require another dressing in a few hours and he had no wine left to clean it. He had a source of fresh water; somewhere outside the cavern, a stream rushed and gurgled. But they needed wine and they needed food, for Isabel’s injury would surely delay them from traveling for a couple of days. He would be damned if he would let her weather the discomfort of hunger along with
her other pains. As soon as night fell, he would venture out and find a town where he could get them some supplies.

Isabel was still sleeping when Griffin ducked out of the cave some hours later. He drew the hood of his mantle up over his head and mounted up, breathing in the cold night air and letting the crisp chill of autumn fill his lungs. With a nudge to his destrier’s sides, he guided the roan toward the edge of the night-dark woods and onto a hard-packed strip of road.

The beast’s hooves clopped at an easy canter, adding a strange counter beat to the faintly tenor sounds of chanting coming from somewhere in the distance. Smoke from a scattering of hearth fires wafted on the late evening breeze as Griff spurred the horse up an incline, the crest overlooking a village nestled in the valley below. Torchlight glowed from a handful of crude domiciles and a large, thatch-roofed tavern inn situated on a small rise near the elbow of the main road.

Griff clucked his tongue at the destrier and headed down.

At least a dozen horses stood tethered outside the public house, some of them clearly knights’ mounts, others the bulky, swaybacked beasts belonging to mercenaries and men of lesser means who had come to drink or lodge for the night. Griff swung down from the saddle and added the Hexford roan to the rest of the waiting mounts, then walked toward the noise-filled tavern. The door to the establishment flew open as he approached and a drunken farmer stumbled out into the night, mumbling a hail to Griffin and staggering to the edge of the building, where he then untied his hose and proceeded to relieve himself. Griff kept his head low as he grabbed the open door and stepped inside the inn, the smell of smoke and tallow, sweat and ale, assailing his nostrils as the warped oak panel creaked closed behind him.

The innkeeper nodded a greeting at Griffin as a serving wench trundled past with six filled tankards in her hands. She slid him an appreciative sidelong glance. “Be right with ye, deary,” she purred through a sparsely toothed grin.