Page 67 of My Hero
Her eyes flew wide. She jerked her hand from his forehead. A hundred emotions flashed across her countenance…shock, gratitude, disbelief. She searched his face, her eyes red-rimmed and bleary with fatigue.
“You’re…” she whispered, the hope naked in her gaze.
His throat felt like a church bell gone to rust. He knew he’d never push a word past it. But he could probably manage a smile. His lips were parchment dry, but he slowly stretched one corner up in a reassuring grin for her.
Which made her begin to sob in earnest.
He started to pull his arm back, dismayed by the havoc he’d unwittingly wrought. But she clutched at his hand, holding it tightly inside both her own. He watched in wonder as she hailed tear-laced kisses upon his fingers. And as battered and weak and hungry as he was, he still felt a wave of marvelous warmth envelop his body, removing all pain and care, leaving room for only one all-embracing, powerful emotion, an emotion long buried in the fertile soil of his boyhood, an emotion that refused to lay dormant and finally broke through the crust of repression to blossom.
It was love.
He loved Cynthia.
He’d tried to deny it. He’d thought that leaving her would diminish the feelings he had for her. He’d believed she was a daughter of Eve sent to tempt him from his calling. But that wasn’t true. Unlike scheming Mariana, who’d delighted in seducing and abandoning him, Cynthia genuinely cared for him. And he…
He loved everything about her—her compassion, her innocence, her fire, the gleam in her eyes when she planned mischief, the wistfulness of her smile as she gazed at her garden, her quicksilver temper, her nurturing patience, the flowery scent of her hair, the healing touch of her hands, the honey taste of her lips…
Though it seemed ages past, he remembered her kiss. The herb garden. Her welcoming arms. Her sweet breast, bare in the moonlight. Soft. Innocent. He swallowed hard as the memory washed over him like a wave.
His affection must have shown in his eyes. Cynthia stilled, and her own eyes softened as if in answer. Tears clung to her lashes like fragile drops of ice. No breath stirred them. For one aching, bittersweet moment, gazing nakedly into each other’s eyes, into each other’s hearts, they shared their desire. For an instant, a warm presence seemed to unite them in a marriage of nature.
Then, as if a shadow fell across her, the joy in her face suddenly darkened. She pulled back, distancing herself from him. Her brow furrowed, and, in the single beat of a heart, she grew as elusive as mist. She wouldn’t meet his eyes as she rearranged the vials of medicine atop the night table.
“You must be famished,” she said, her voice cracking like brittle glass.
He was, but somehow that didn’t seem so important anymore.
“You’ll have to start out slowly,” she said, half to herself, wringing out a linen rag over a basin of water. “Barley water.” She hung the rag over the clothing peg. “A posset of almonds.”
“Cynthia.” Even to his own ears, the word sounded like a studded mace scraping across chain mail, and hurt worse, but Garth had to know what was wrong.
She wiped away the tears that continued forming in her eyes. “Bits of bread.”
“Cynthia.”
She sniffled and turned her back. “I’ll fetch the prior. He can tend to you now.” She swept up her satchel and began replacing the medicine bottles. “You should recover fully within a week.”
He frowned. She might have proclaimed him fit for the grave, for all the sorrow that colored her words.
“Cynthia.”
“I have to go home now. To my life,” she said, stifling a whimper, jamming the last of her herbs into the satchel. Her next words were more sob than speech. “And leave you to yours.”
He scowled. What did she mean? He had no life without her.
Yet the words she threw at him were his. He was the one who’d told her they couldn’t live in the same world. He was the one who’d left her.
“Nay,” he protested, cursing the feebleness that left him unable to block her path to the door.
Without a backward glance, Cynthia flew from his cell, leaving no evidence of her visit save the faint scent of her womanly skin and the hollow ache in his heart. An ache that pained him more than all his other ills together.
Cynthia wept all the way home, great tearing sobs that felt as if they ripped her very soul from her. By the time she rode through the gates of Wendeville, she was so exhausted, so empty, so bereft, she couldn’t even answer Elspeth’s anxious questions. Refusing the posset of almonds the maid handed her, she trudged up the steps to her chamber and slept for nearly a whole day.
When she finally awoke, it was to the sound of splashing water and the scent of violets. The sun lit her chamber in ripe afternoon shades of russet and rose.
“Are you among the living now?” Elspeth asked, drying her hands on her apron and hovering near to chatter away like a squirrel. “You must have worn yourself out, my lady. At first, we thought perhaps the chaplain had succumbed, so sorrowful was your countenance last eve.” Without ceremony, Elspeth whipped back the coverlet and proceeded to undress her. “But then a prior came, asking after you and bringing a cask of fine monastery wine to thank you for saving Father Garth’s life.”
Cynthia shivered as El peeled off her sweat-stained underdress and handed her a linen towel for modesty. She tangled a hand in her own matted hair. How long had it been since she’d combed it? She ran her tongue across her teeth. Her mouth felt as dry as dust. As she staggered, still half-asleep, to the bath, her belly growled with hunger.
