White Lion's Lady (25 page)

Isabel managed a weak smile, knowing he only did what was necessary to make her better. “I vow I would fare no better under the care of the abbess of St. Winifred herself, and people traveled many leagues for the benefit of her skills.”

“I am no healer,” Griffin said, dismissing her praise as he reached for the ribbons of torn silk and began to carefully wrap the bindings around her arm. “I have tended my own battle injuries, but never another’s. Never a lady’s. Your skin is so delicate, and the bolt was … unforgiving.
God’s blood, Isabel, when I think what you did …” His voice trailed off, his gaze sliding askance to meet hers. “You might have been killed.”

“I wasn’t,” she replied, unable to keep from smiling up at him if only to reassure him. “Besides, I warrant I owed you as much. You saved my life once; now I have saved yours. We are finally even, my lord.”

“Even?” he scoffed mildly, looking both annoyed and tortured by her remark. “There was no score between us to settle, my lady. You owed me nothing.”

“I couldn’t let them harm you,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “No matter what might have happened.”

Instead of warming to her earnest declaration, he scowled and went back to work on her arm, finishing the first wrapping and looping the outer bandage around to secure it in place. “You should not have risked it. It was madness, Isabel.”

“Perhaps,” she admitted quietly. “But I would do it again, and without a moment’s regret.”

He tied off the ends of the last bandage and his fingers went suddenly still in their ministrations. He pivoted his head to regard her, firelight dancing in gay contrast across the stern, stark angles of his face.

“I would take a thousand arrows for you, Griffin. I swear it.”

Something flickered in his hooded gaze, an elusive spark of emotion that was there for an instant and gone, vanished under the deepening slash of his brows. His mouth curved slightly, but Isabel saw more anguish in the effort than she did elation. “You’re speaking nonsense. The wine has gone to your head, making you say things you don’t mean. Things you may later regret.”

“It’s not the wine, Griffin. I know exactly what I’m saying.”

His gaze intensified as he looked upon her in the lengthening silence, the muscles in his jaw growing taut. His eyes
seemed to look into the depths of her very soul, his face naught but a scant few inches from hers.

“My lady.” His voice was a deep masculine growl, his breath warm against her cheek. Slowly, almost tentatively, he leaned in and placed a tender kiss on her mouth. It was sweet and heady and much too brief, a chaste meeting of their lips that still managed to make Isabel melt inside. Griffin kept his face close to hers even after he ended their kiss, his forehead pressed against hers, his hand woven into the hair at her nape, cupping her skull and drawing her close. His lips brushed her mouth as he spoke. “Never have I known such fear as I did in that moment you turned into the arrow’s path. And I don’t ever want to know it again, do you understand?”

He moved away from her then, a distance Isabel immediately mourned. “Besides,” he added, his voice quiet, oddly reflective, “I’m not worth what you did. No one—nothing in this world—is worth the price you might have paid today. Honor is for fools, Isabel, trust me. The sooner you learn it, the better.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe that and neither do you.”

His answer was swift, brittle. “Don’t I? Mayhap you should tell that to all the men I’ve killed in service to Dom. Tell it to their wives and children, or the folk I’ve made homeless in the villages I’ve helped to sack.” Isabel felt herself shrink away from him a little, not sure what to make of the darkness that had begun to creep into his eyes. Her timid reaction did not seem to surprise him; he gave a harsh, almost sad laugh. “My hands have been bloodied hundreds of times with the sacrifice of decent, noble men. They did what their honor commanded them to do, but they’re still dead.”

“You can’t hold yourself responsible for what you did at Droghallow,” she told him gently. “You were only doing what you had to do. There’s no dishonor in that.”

“No? I expect the daughter of Droghallow’s reeve would beg to differ with you on that score, my lady.”

Isabel frowned. “You mean the woman Dom attacked?”

“I didn’t tell you everything that happened,” he said, his voice too level for the heavy burden that showed in his eyes. “When we spoke of it at Hexford that night, there were things I left out. Things I am ashamed to tell you, even now.”

Although she feared what he might say, Isabel reached out her hand to him. “You can tell me anything, Griffin.”

To her relief, he did not pull away. He wouldn’t look at her, but he caught her fingers and held them, his grasp firm, needful somehow. His thumb idly stroked the back of her knuckles as he spoke, staring at their clasped hands. “You remember how Sir Robert had made provisions for the woman and her new husband?”

“Yes. He wanted to make up for what Dom had done.”

Griffin sighed, his chest lifting as he drew another breath and continued. “When the earl died later that year, Dom immediately called for a strict accounting of his assets. He wanted to know where all of his money was going and to whom. Upon learning of Sir Robert’s arrangement, he flew into a rage. I was ordered to accompany him down to the village and help him eject the couple from their cottage. I suppose I thought he would turn them both out of Droghallow and let the matter go.” He made a dry sound in the back of his throat. “Dom had other plans.”

Isabel swallowed a sudden knot of dread. “What did he do?”

“It was noontide when we got there. The woman and her husband had just sat down to share a meal before continuing on with their day’s tasks. Dom demanded entry, and of course, as their overlord, they could not refuse him. He drew his sword and cleared their table with a long sweep of his arm, telling them that as he had paid for the food, it was his to ruin. He had similar words for the woman.”

“They must have been so terrified,” Isabel whispered, finding it easy to put herself in their place, at the mercy of a cruel lord’s whims with nowhere to run.

“She was crying, pleading for mercy as Dom advanced on her. Her husband tried to intervene, but I stood between him and Dom. He was cursing us both, snarling as he fought to get past me and help his wife. He slipped on some of the debris scattered on the floor of the hut, and when he got back to his feet, he had a small knife in his hand. Dom was too preoccupied to notice the threat, but I saw the blade plain enough, and I knew the cottar intended to use it.” Griffin was frowning, likely reliving the painful moment in his mind. He blinked, then finally turned his gaze on Isabel. “I couldn’t let him do it.”

“Griffin …” she said softly, feeling the burden of his guilt.

“I had promised I would look after Dom, and despite my loathing for him in that instant, I could not stand aside and let him be killed. So I struck first. I murdered that young man when all he wanted to do was spare his wife from a second degradation at Dom’s hands.” Griffin exhaled a shaky breath. “He had to know he would die, but it didn’t stop him from acting, from doing what was right. I admired his honor, but it didn’t save him or his home. And it didn’t save his wife, either.”

“Mother Mary,” she sighed, heartsick. “Have you carried this with you all these years?”

“I should have turned my blade on Dom instead,” he replied, not hearing her, too caught up in the pain of old memories to see that she did not condemn him for what he had done. “Maybe now you better understand who I am. Maybe now you see how wrong you were to try to save me.”

“No,” she said. “This doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the way I think about you … it doesn’t change the way I feel.”

“It damned well should,” he scoffed. “You should be scheming a way to be rid of me at first chance.”

“I never want to be rid of you, Griffin,” she answered without hesitation. “I think I would go with you to the ends of the earth if you asked me to.”

He went suddenly still as he looked at her then, searching her gaze as if confused by her gesture of understanding, confused by the depth of her acceptance of him in that moment. When she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his battle-hardened fingers, he swore a soft oath. “My lady,” he whispered, part question, part warning.

Isabel said nothing, holding his pained stare as she turned her face into his palm and kissed its warm, callused center. Griffin’s brows crashed together, a tormented frown that bespoke of his inner turmoil. His eyes penetrated through the gloom of the cavern, searching hers, hungry yet uncertain, no doubt a reflection of her own gaze. He said her name and then he was moving closer to her, catching her mouth with his.

They kissed with a desperation neither could deny, their lips meeting, parting, then meeting again, hands touching, twining, trembling in their quest for contact. Isabel had never felt so alive, so willing to let go of everything so long as she was clinging to Griffin. She took all that he gave her in that moment, welcoming the sensual invasion of his tongue, letting his hands close over her naked breasts that so ached for his touch. She opened to him wherever he wanted her to, holding him close.

Wanting him closer.

When she would have wrapped her arms around him tighter, instead he started to back away. “No,” he said, his voice thick, strangled-sounding. “I don’t want to hurt you, Isabel.”

Lovingly, she stroked his cheek. “You’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I will. This isn’t fair to you. I promised myself—” He broke off abruptly, shaking his head. “I can’t do
this to you. I won’t.” Behind him, the fire popped and shifted, the last of the kindling fading to embers. He reached out, drawing the mantle tighter around her shoulders. “The fire will be out soon. You should try to sleep before it starts to get cold in here.”

She didn’t bother to argue because in that next moment, Griffin moved beside her and gathered her into his arms. His embrace was now more nurturing than sensual, and while her body still sang with his kiss, his wondrous touch, Isabel found herself snuggling into him like a kitten nesting in a basket of warm fleece. She buried her face in the solid comfort of his chest, breathing in the scent of him, that sublime mix of woodsmoke, night air, and man. Her palm rested over his heart, the steady thud of his pulse soothing her, easing her into a state of total tranquility and peace.

Her eyelids drifted closed almost immediately, and soon she was drifting off, succumbing to the weightlessness of a deep, black sleep that seemed to pull her under like the tide.

He must have fallen asleep, though for how long Griff could not be certain. The fire had long since burnt to ash; morning was dawning damp and chilly beyond the cave, the cold air permeating the curve of rock at his back and seeping through his tunic and into his bones. Griffin pulled the edge of his mantle a little higher around Isabel, who slept soundly in his arms, quiet as a babe. He moved gently, loath to wake her as he reached down to tuck the soft wool under her chin.

Refreshed from sleep, his body responded easily to the feel of her draped over him in languorous slumber, their legs entwined beneath the cover of the cloak, her hip propped against his, her slender torso and firm, full breasts nestled enticingly into his chest. She was warm and soft in his arms, an angel fell from heaven on broken wings, wounded, trusting him to take care of her.

All too willingly, Griffin’s mind returned to the intimacy they had shared last night, her tender understanding of his shame, her infinite goodness. His mind returned to the kiss they shared, as well, to the searing passion he had felt in Isabel’s embrace, the hunger he had scarcely been able to control. God help him, he felt those savage stirrings come to life again just looking at her, just recalling the sweetness of her touch, her innocent sensuality. Of its own accord, his hand came up to caress the soft waves of her unbound hair, which tumbled down her back and onto him in a warm
cloud of auburn silk. For a long moment, he tipped his head back and allowed himself to savor the quiet of the moment. He allowed himself to simply savor the feel of her, tracing his fingers idly through her hair.

Though it went against all logic and reason, Griffin wondered what it might be like for the two of them without the threat of Dominic or John Lackland. He wondered what it would be like without the royal order of Isabel’s marriage to Sebastian of Montborne. How much silver would it take, he wondered, for the both of them to run away from all of this madness? How feasible might it be to disappear from England, to flee to someplace where they could be safe together? Someplace where they would never be found.

Although he doubted there existed such a place, it did not keep Griffin from thinking on it, from wishing for a solution to the impossible situation that held them pinned between two unbearable outcomes, each to result in their inevitable separation.

I think I would go with you to the ends of the earth if you asked me to
.

That earnest if not slightly drunken confession continued to haunt him all these hours later. God rot him, but when she said it, he had nearly swept her up and taken her away on the spot. He was tempted to do so even now. Particularly now, before she woke up sober and clearheaded enough to recant her foolish offer.

“My sweet Izzy,” Griff whispered as he stroked the lean curve of her arm. “What are we to do, you and I?” Tenderly, he swept aside the mass of flame-colored waves that had fallen into her face, then bent his head down to press his lips to her brow.

All the blood in his veins seemed to freeze the moment his mouth touched her skin.

Her forehead burned like fire against his mouth; her skin was flushed pink and hot to the touch.

Dear God, Griffin realized in sudden, sweeping alarm. She was fevered.

“Isabel?” he said on a harsh, indrawn breath. “Isabel, wake up.”

But she did not so much as stir. Her lifeless form sprawled atop him like a child’s doll, limp, unmoving, unhearing. Terrifyingly still.

“Isabel,” he repeated, his voice stern, strangled with budding panic. He gave her a little shake, but it did nothing to rouse her. He felt her cheeks with the back of his hand, pressed his ear to her pale, parched lips to listen for signs of life. The shallow breath of air she drew into her lungs gave him hope, but when he then pulled away the coverlet and hastily removed the bandage from her arm, he knew a swift and heart-wrenching twist of dread.