Page 40 of My Hero
He rubbed a tired eye with his palm. He should go to bed. He knew that. But tomorrow’s sermon eluded him, and the troubling war within him kept sleep just out of his grasp.
He knew all too well the name of his demon.
Cynthia le Wyte.
Damn it all! He couldn’t exile her from his thoughts. She reminded him too clearly of the sweet days of his youth—endless hours lounging in the dappled shade of the willow with nothing but larks and squirrels for company, mornings spent conquering Latin as zealously as his brothers conquered the sword, long summer afternoons scented with life and dreams and jasmine.
He’d banished himself from that world as surely as Adam had gotten himself expelled from Eden—also because of a woman. And here was another of her ilk wreaking havoc with a man’s soul.
Yet he found it difficult to utter the names of Cynthia and Mariana in the same breath. They were nothing alike. Cynthia was every bit as beautiful and tempting as Mariana had been, but those were superficial things. There was something beyond that, something more profound in Cynthia that had the capacity not only to wound him more deeply, but to utterly destroy him.
Today, when she’d handed him that poor dead infant, when her anguish spoke to him through her eyes, he’d seen a facet of Cynthia le Wyte he’d forgotten, something that harked back to that time in his mother’s garden and compounded the confusion of his feelings.
He’d seen her vulnerable.
And that made her all the more irresistible, all the more dangerous.
Of course, her subsequent taunting had changed his opinion. The woman had been utterly ruthless, picking and poking and prodding at him until she found the chink in his armor.
Yet she’d been utterly astonished when she’d stumbled onto that chink. Perhaps she’d only been toying with the embers of his sin, never expecting them to burst into flame. And when they did, she was more shocked than he.
In truth, he knew Cynthia didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. He’d watched her work her healing on every wretched soul who requested it over the past several days, whether their ills were real or imagined. She showed uncommon strength, generosity of spirit, genuine compassion.
Still, whatever had inspired her to pry into his personal affairs, she’d managed to expose his sin, stripping him of his dignity and humiliating him beyond bearing.
Hewouldbear it. After all, he wasn’t his brothers, who would duel over the slightest slight. He was a priest. Priests bore humiliation all the time. It tested one’s faith, strengthened one’s spirit.
What daunted him more was thinking about the days, weeks, years to come. How could he maintain his propriety, his dignity, his sanity when she flitted about, probing at his soul, whether it was with gentle fingers or prying claws?
Isolation had been his answer before. But it was absurd to think he could hide behind monastery walls now. Now he lived in a secular world, a world flawed and disorderly and riddled with sin, among a congregation to whom, tomorrow, he was supposed to preach the word of God.
Slumping in resignation, he retrieved the rumpled parchment from the floor and attempted to smooth the wrinkles from it. It was a piece of offal, unfit for a priest addressing his flock for the first time, but it would have to do. In a few hours, the sun would lighten the sky.
Frustrated, he slammed his hand flat on the pulpit, putting the candle out of its misery, and made his way by moonlight back to his cell.
Cynthia peered through the veil of steam rising off the surface of the bath awaiting her. The first rays of the sun filtered through the arched windows of her solar and glinted off the bathwater like sparkling jewels. The ethereal haze gave the cloudless morn and the distant tree-covered dales a dreamlike quality.
But the dark hours of the morning had been more nightmare than dream. The Sabbath had begun early for Cynthia. Too restless to sleep, she’d lain awake half the night while images of Garth committing the sin of lust slithered erotically through her brain. Thus, when Elspeth came just past midnight to whisper that the cooper’s wife had begun to birth her child, it was little bother for Cynthia to rise and go to her at once. By candlelight, in the hushed hours long before daybreak, Cynthia and Jeanne the midwife took turns holding the dame’s hand, mopping her brow, giving her sips of a soothing chamomile infusion. While the stars yet shimmered in the ebony sky, a healthy baby girl made her appearance.
Scarcely had Cynthia crawled back to bed when Elspeth shook her awake again. Two young squires had eaten tainted oysters for supper. Rubbing her grainy eyes, Cynthia trudged downstairs.
Carmine thistle helped purge the poison from the boys. She was then obliged, upon hearing their confession, to deliver a stern lecture about the questionable merits of ingesting raw oysters as aphrodisiacs.
No sooner had Cynthia gone to fetch a bite from the kitchen than another crisis reared its head. One of the hounds had snapped at the groom’s daughter while she slept. The puncture, dealt to the meaty part of her hand, wasn’t too deep, for all the ocean of tears the girl wept. She probably deserved the bite anyway. Cynthia knew the lass loved to tease the hounds with bits of meat.
While Cynthia tended the girl, her father decided he, too, might as well avail himself of her talents for his clutched bowels. She gave him dandelion extract.
By the time the sky changed from indigo to apricot, Cynthia was too exhausted to sleep. She popped a morsel of stale bread into her mouth and had servants lug a cauldron of hot water up to her room so she could bathe.
In a short while, Garth would deliver his first sermon at Wendeville. She didn’t want to miss it, but she couldn’t go to the chapel smelling like sweat or blood or worse. She eyed her herbs, lined up in multicolored vials upon the table. Lavender? Cinnamon? Oil of roses. Nay. What she wanted was in the herb cellar.
The cellar door was ajar when she arrived, and candlelight flickered along the plaster wall. Frowning, she peered in.
“Good morn?”
The light jogged wildly, and Cynthia heard a gasp.
“Who’s there?” she asked, venturing in.
