Page 25 of My Hero
Even Cynthia backed away from the woman’s caustic onslaught.
“Where can he have gone, I’m wondering.” The woman shook herself like a wet dog as she charged forward, spattering the rushes with raindrops. “Where’s my darling son while his bride’s a-waiting on the chapel steps, all teary and shivering?” She beat hard at her sodden skirts, making mist. “While his father’s tripping over his words to find something to say to her poor parents?” She seized the boy by the arm, and he yelped like a beat hound. “While the priest is going on and on to pass the time, sermonizing on Commandments even Moses never heard of!”
Garth ducked his head in a desperate attempt to contain his mirth.
“‘Oh,’ says your cousin, drunk as a fish, ‘he’s gone to find him arealwife instead of the child he’s betrothed to.’” With that, the woman seized her son by the ear and dragged him toward the door, unconcerned with the gaping spectators. “Arealwife? Ha! You wouldn’t know what to do with a real wife.”
With that, she charged back out into the stormy afternoon, slamming the door behind her, leaving a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire.
Cynthia hardly knew what to say. Whatever had just happened, it didn’t bode well for the lad.
“Well.” She gathered the blankets the boy had shed in his haste, shaking the rushes from them, and the rest of the castle folk began blathering about what had just transpired.
Meanwhile, Garth sat with one hand clamped firmly about his jaw, studiously examining the toy he held on his lap. She looked closer at his profile. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear that crinkle at the corner of his eye was not concentration but amusement.
She supposed itwasamusing. The youth’s eyes had nearly popped out of their sockets when he’d seen his mother coming for him. And she’d looked as angry as a drenched hen. Where had Elspeth come by the boy anyway? She turned to ask that very thing, but her maidservant slipped quickly into the kitchen, her cheeks flaming.
“Look, my lady.” Little Dylan jumped up, the toy in his hands. “The Father fixed it. He put on scales and claws and a terrible frown, and look!” He held the toy up to her face, too close. She reared her head back and glimpsed the bright red edge staining the wood. Dylan whispered loudly in awe. “It’s blood, my lady,realblood.”
Cynthia pressed her hand to her bosom. Dear God, that couldn’t be…
She glanced at Garth. The residue of laughter still sparkled in his eyes. She lowered her gaze to his thumb, which he’d pressed against his finger to stop the bleeding. She gulped. Had he really cut himself just to please a child?
Dylan was beyond pleased. She never understood why little boys loved gore so dearly, but the dragon with the grisly wound and real priest’s blood would probably be Dylan’s proudest possession for years to come.
“You’ll need comfrey for that,” she told Garth.
He frowned and shrugged. She supposed being a de Ware, he’d suffered his share of scrapes and punctures. But he was a member of her household now, and she wouldn’t have anyone under her care develop infection. Tousling Dylan’s hair, she strode off to fetch her bag of medicines.
When she returned moments later, Dylan was gone, probably off terrorizing all the little girls in the keep. Garth was hunkered near the fire, staring into the flames. She paused in the shadows of the entryway to watch him.
His eyes reflected the fire’s flicker, and she could see calm contentment there. He’d enjoyed working on Dylan’s toy, she knew. She’d been watching him then, too, though she pretended to be preoccupied with their wayward guest. The Abbot had said Garth was a talented scribe, but the dragon’s snarling fangs and curving claws had been the result of far more than a steady hand. Garth possessed singular imagination and artistry. Dylan had been fascinated with the priest’s labors as well, leaning so close and with such fervent interest that Cynthia feared the intrepid lad might actually climb onto his lap.
Garth didn’t seem annoyed in the least. He looked perfectly at ease with the little boy’s grubby hand planted on his thigh and his freckled face pressed close. But then Cynthia supposed Garth was accustomed to children. He probably had nieces and nephews of his own. How sad it must have been for him to be away from them, locked in a monastery with nothing but grown men.
Garth stirred the fire with one of the leftover pieces of wood he’d brought, and the flames licked up, suffusing his face with a golden glow. How beautiful he was, she thought yet again, his chiseled features etched in warm relief by the firelight, his hair catching the color in shades of amber and bronze. As he crouched before the hearth, his wide back and shoulders strained against the coarse wool of his cassock, leaving no doubt that he was both a man and a de Ware. And yet there was something boyish about the way he sat poking at the fire. She could imagine a smaller version of him beside this grown Garth, a little boy with mussed hair and wide green eyes, and the thought made her smile.
So lost was she in her musing that she was astonished to find Garth staring at her. The pleasure was gone from his eyes, replaced by something cool and unapproachable. For one instant, she was tempted to creep back up the stairs to her chamber. But she wasn’t a timorous mouse to be daunted by a dark look, even if it saddened her to know it was the sight of her that had erased the warmth from his face.
So she marched forward, pulling out the tincture of comfrey and chattering to fill the ungainly silence.
“Has it stopped bleeding yet? I can’t imagine what you were thinking.” She seized his wrist, despite a mild show of resistance from him, and inspected the cut. It was long but not very deep. “You know, I’m certain little Dylan would have been just as content with ink.” She didn’t believe that. The boy was obviously thrilled with his bloody treasure. But as a healer, she certainly couldn’t condone such carnage.
She wet a small linen pad with the comfrey and supported his hand as she swabbed gently across the cut. His flesh was warm from the fire, his palm wide and smooth, so unlike the scarred hands of the peasants and knights she usually tended to or the wrinkled paw of her departed husband. Garth’s fingers were long and supple, his hand well muscled, and, to Cynthia’s utter mortification, she began to imagine how that hand would feel upon her own body, tracing her hip, fondling her ankle, caressing her breast. She swallowed hard.
A prominent vein ran across the back of Garth’s hand, and Cynthia felt the pulse there quicken, almost as if he read her thoughts. She dared not look at him, certain her eyes betrayed her wayward mind.
“It was kind of you to repair his toy,” she murmured, tossing the soiled pad into the fire, but loath to return his hand, “especially at so great a price.” She chewed the corner of her lip, then blurted out, “Indeed, you’re so good with children, I believe you might one day make a fine father.”
Garth pulled his hand away at that, withdrawing it into the sleeve of his cassock faster than a startled turtle, and Cynthia knew she’d said exactly the wrong thing. Before she could explain or apologize or soothe his ruffled feathers, he wheeled away, gathered his tools, and exited the great hall.
Chapter 7
Despite her rash comment, Cynthia’s opinions about Garth’s paternal nature were only reinforced the next morn.
She’d ventured along the wall walk during a brief respite in the downpour to enjoy a breath of rain-washed air. The clouds, while still concealing the blue sky, had broken momentarily like soldiers regrouping for battle. The trees drooped with their drizzly burden, and the sod lay black with moisture. As she let her eye course along the far gray horizon and the nearer knolls, she spied two figures walking along the edge of the forest.
Garth’s dark cassock camouflaged him against the trees, but the tiny golden-haired girl in the blue kirtle stood out like a flower amid the grass. Cynthia narrowed her eyes. The lass was Grizel, the armorer’s daughter, and she was carrying something in her cupped hands. They stopped beside a massive old oak tree and Garth motioned to the girl. She nodded. Garth then knelt on the wet ground and began digging with a hand spade.
