Page 69 of My Hero
“Aye.” Garth’s smile felt forced.
“But…” He clapped his solid hand atop Garth’s. “A healthy body does not make a man whole.” Garth tightened his grip on the parchment. “Your mind is yet troubled, isn’t it?”
“Troubled?”
To his alarm, Prior Thomas gently pried the ball of parchment from him. Then he continued speaking, gesturing with the damned thing. “Aye. Troubled. Tormented. Restless.”
Garth cleared his throat. “A priest’s mind is…is ever restless while there is…sin in the world.”
Silence reigned for a moment. Then the prior chuckled, tossing the unopened parchment back onto the desk. “Sin? Or Cynthia?”
Mortified, Garth clenched his fists, prepared to protest.
“Now lad, it’s no use trying to deceive this old fox,” Prior Thomas assured him with a wink.
Garth challenged the prior’s gaze. But Thomas’s eyes were full of empathy, not scorn. The man was genuinely trying to help. Garth forced his hackles down.
“It’s hopeless, Father,” he said softly, resting his forehead on his palms. “I can’t banish her from my mind. I pray. I fast. I immerse myself in this.” He picked up the wad of parchment, stared at it. “And still she haunts me.”
The prior nodded. “Like the other one?”
He frowned. “The other one?” Mariana. He meant Mariana—sultry, scheming Mariana who roused him with the wiles of a harlot. “Nay, nothing like her. Mariana was cruel. Cynthia is…” There were no words to describe her, at least none he could repeat to the prior, nothing to explain the wholeness of spirit, the rightness he felt with her. “Cynthia is not.”
The prior smiled dryly. “High praise indeed for the woman who saved your life.”
Garth’s mind seized the alibi faster than a hound snatching a morsel of meat. “Aye. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s merely gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” the prior chuckled. “Nay, I don’t think so. I administered a bit of medicine to you myself, but it was never my name you cried out in your fever.”
Garth let out a long breath and rubbed at his temples, where a dull throbbing had begun. “Surely God has abandoned me. And yet I’ve done everything in my power to succumb to His will. Why does He not guide me in this?”
The prior sighed and waddled slowly before the desk, musing. “Perhaps He does.” He tapped his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Brother Garth, let me speak plainly.” He laced his fingers together over his round belly. “The crops are planted. The monastery stores are ample. I have two novitiates drooling over your desk like pups, eager to practice their letters. And in light of the quantity of broken quills and wasted parchment I’ve seen of late, I must say I’m tempted to let them.”
Garth straightened defensively. “I can pay for—”
“Nay, nay, that’s not my point,” the prior said, waving away his offer. “Besides, your father has endowed us with enough silver for a mountain of parchment and a sea of ink. Nay, the marrow of it is that God seems to be guiding you most deliberately.” He paused expectantly.
Garth scowled.
“Your work with Lady Cynthia is obviously not finished,” Thomas explained, “in God’s eyes.”
Garth pressed the wrinkles from his brow.
“You’re not needed at the monastery, Garth,” the prior gently confided. “But Wendeville continues to lack a chaplain.”
“Then find another.” Garth frowned again. “I can’t work beside her, feeling…what I feel.”
The prior took his hand in a surprisingly firm grip until Garth raised his eyes. “You can’t stay here, my son, feeling what you feel.”
Garth bit the inside of his cheek. He wondered how it was possible to feel hope and dread at the same time. His heart raced at the prospect of seeing Cynthia again, but apprehension paralyzed his limbs. He vacillated in indecision.
“Garth, I’ve given Brother Andrew your cell.”
“What?” He blinked.
“I promised him that when you were fully healed—”
“You’re banishing me from the monastery?” Garth asked, incredulous.
