Page 46 of The Unwilling Bride
“No.”
“Truly, Peder?”
“Just my back, a bit.”
“You must rest and stay out of the smoke.”
“I tell you, I’m all right,” he insisted.
“I tell you, you’re not. Do I have to summon Lord Merrick again to keep you here?”
“Lord Merrick? What’s he—?”
“He carried you from where you fell.”
Peder’s brow furrowed. “He never.”
“He did, and unless you want him demanding an explanation for why you’re risking another fainting spell, you’ll stay here and rest.”
Before he could answer, two more men came toward her, with a third hobbling between them, holding on to their shoulders.
“One of the slates from the roof fell on me foot,” themiddle man said, grimacing as his friends set him down. “I think it’s broke, my lady.”
After she tended to that man’s injury, another came with a burned arm from a falling piece of timber. Then another with a strained arm. It was only when the sun was nearing its high point in the day and the mill was a smoking hulk of masonry that she realized the fire was out, and the miller’s house was still standing.
Beyond the small circle of the injured, the men and women who’d carried the buckets and otherwise fought the fire lay or sat on the ground, too exhausted to move, including Ranulf and Henry, who was, it seemed, too tired even to talk.
Demelza and other servants from the castle went among them, serving them water, ale, soup or stew in wooden bowls. Beatrice had done her job well.
She should tell Merrick about the injuries she’d tended, and what must be done next for those who’d been hurt.
“Have you seen Lord Merrick?” she asked Ranulf.
“He’s in the mill,” the knight answered, nodding at the smoking, soot-blackened building.
“Probably trying to figure out how it started,” Henry said, wiping his sooty brow with the back of his hand. “Thank God no one was killed.”
“Yes, thank God,” Constance seconded as she left them to go to what was left of the mill, wondering who could be so evil as to fire a building whose destruction would affect everyone in Tregellas.
“My lord?” she ventured as she gingerly picked herway through the open door that was hanging off one twisted leather hinge. The sunlight shone in where the roof had been, illuminating the charred wood and smoke-stained walls. She wrinkled her nose at the heavy smell of scorched, damp wood and burnt grain.
“Here.”
He stood near the huge millstones that had fallen to the ground and cracked in two. His hands on his hips, he was black with soot from head to toe, his chest and arms and face streaked where the sweat had run down in rivulets.
He looked the way Vulcan might have, before he’d been thrown from Olympus—a powerful, dark god, and one burning with a righteous wrath she shared.
“Some of your soldiers will need assistance to get back to the castle,” she said, moving closer. “And they’ll have to rest for a few days. Fortunately, their injuries are minor.”
“I wish the damage to the mill was minor,” he muttered.
The walls still looked sound to her. “Can it not be repaired?”
“I’m no mason, but I fear the heat has ruined the mortar and cracked some of the stones.” He nudged the fallen millstones with his foot. “These will have to be replaced.”
Constance thought a moment. “Sir Jowan has been praising the mason leading the work on the rebuilding of his northern wall. Perhaps he could come and tell us if we can make repairs to the walls, or must rebuild entirely.”
“I’ll ask Sir Jowan if he can spare his mason for a few days,” Merrick agreed.
