Page 53 of My Hero
He reached up to brush the curls from her cheek, and a sharp dagger of guilt jabbed at him. It wasn’t only Cynthia’s command over healing forces that troubled him.
For several miles, he’d tried to convince himself that what he felt for Lady Cynthia was solely protectiveness, a fatherly care for her welfare, a priest’s concern for her soul.
But he knew he deluded himself. Even now, the evidence of his undeniable male craving pressed firm against her.
Thank God she was asleep. Even through his cassock, where she touched him, his skin burned like heavenly fire. Her fragrance wafted up to him, fresh as meadowsweet, pure as rain. Her head rested upon his chest, and her breath moistened the wool of his cassock and, where the robe had slipped loose from its tie, warmed the flesh over his heart.
It was a sin to feel such desire. And yet there was nothing he could do about it. Cynthia Wendeville tempted his thirsty eyes, his empty arms, his starved loins. And worst of all, she threatened his lonely soul.
Chapter 13
Sleep was the last thing on Garth’s mind after they returned and he lay on his bed, gazing out the window at the stars. Outside, the cricket’s songs slowed as the air grew chill. From the distant wood, a nightingale’s call rose.
Somewhere, in another part of the castle, Lady Cynthia slumbered. He could imagine the coppery sprawl of her hair across her pillow, the soft brush of her lashes upon her cheek, the deep rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed. The moonlight would bathe her in silver. And she’d sleep like a child—deeply, dreamlessly—after the arduous day she’d endured.
Meanwhile, he lay awake, haunted by doubt, enthralled by desire.
Cynthia Wendeville was an enigma. Walking among those with the dread disease like a saint among sinners, she toiled with her hands and her heart and every last ounce of her strength. She was an angel of mercy come to sully her hands on their ills, and she worked with no complaint, no expectation of reward, even when, by the end of the day, the villagers had drained her completely, like innocent but greedy babes suckling at her breast.
And yet, that strange ritual…
Was she God’s instrument? Or the devil’s?
His loins would have him believe the latter. Not in all his youth had lust struck him such a powerful blow.
He sat up, wrenching the feather bolster from beneath his head and hurling it toward the foot of the bed. He’d find no rest tonight. Plowing a hand through his hair, he trudged to the window. The moonlight illuminated the trees in ghostly shades of white and gray and spilled like milk over the stone still. From the wood shone a pair of glowing orbs, the slow blinking eyes of an owl on the hunt.
Then his eyes caught movement along the inner wall of the castle. He frowned, dropping back out of sight to watch.
A slight cloaked figure slipped through the shadows, a cloth sack over one shoulder, the face concealed by a hood. A young lad? Nay, a woman, probably en route to some tryst or another.
The thought irritated him, but not as much as it intrigued him. And the fact that it intrigued him made him even more irritable. While he was sorting out the convoluted knot of that logic, the figure stepped momentarily into a patch of light.
Every muscle in Garth’s body tensed.
Clutched in the figure’s distinctly feminine hand, flashing in the moonlight, was something long and sharp and silver.
Climbing out through the window was the first impulsive thing he’d done in years. Stealing across the sward in bare feet was the second. Neither choice was prudent. He snagged his cassock on the stone sill, giving anyone who happened to be watching a clear view of his naked hindquarters as he slid to the ground. And his unshod feet slipped on the cold wet grass. But he dared not lose sight of the girl with the blade.
He shadowed her, ducking into the dark twice when she turned warily at some sound, until she stopped in the middle of the courtyard, before the herb garden. He glanced quickly about. No one else seemed to be in the vicinity—no victims awaiting her attack.
Only when she sank into a squat before a bush of nightshade did he discern that the sharp silver implement she carried was no instrument of murder. It was a spade.
He sank back against the courtyard wall, feeling like a fool. He could see now it was Mary, Cynthia’s maidservant. No doubt she’d been sent to gather herbs. It was common enough for women to plant and harvest at all hours of the night. He remembered, as a boy, his own mother sowing seed at midnight by the light of the full moon. She said it ensured a better harvest.
Still, watching Mary uproot, with almost brutal force and speed, the nightshade, the hellebore, and the wormwood in turn, he had to doubt her motives. Her stealth seemed misplaced. No one operating on the directive of the household would fear discovery.
Nay, he suspected she acted on her own. When she moved on to the monkshood, stabbing almost frantically at the ground to loose it from the soil, he crept forward to confront her.
“Mary,” he whispered, trying not to startle her.
She didn’t scream. She did gasp, however, and her eyes grew as round as hen’s eggs. Dropping the spade, she scrabbled backward in the dirt, kicking up a little furrow before her.
“What are you doing?” he demanded in a low voice.
“N-n-nothing.”
He cocked a brow at her. “It’s an offense against God to lie to a priest.”
