Page 36 of Always
“I have nowhere to stow the animals, not with so little time.”
After long minutes during which no one arrived, I started to breathe easier, hoping Lance’s keen senses and intuition were wrong. But soon enough voices drifted our way.
“Good eve,” came a friendly call from two men who rounded a bend in the brook, pulling behind them a cart loaded with wood. They were large, ruddy fellows with axes slung over their shoulders.
Lance stood slowly from where he’d been kneeling in the brook, his face a mask of impassivity. I could see that he was sizing up the newcomers and determining whether the two were friend or foe. “Good eve,” he finally responded with a lowly accent and hunching his shoulders as he did whenever we came upon strangers to make himself less imposing.
After a few minutes of small talk and discovering the two were woodcutters, the taller of the men rubbed his long beard and narrowed his eyes upon Lance. “King Ethelwulf has put a price on the head of any soldier fleeing from King Francis’s army.”
“I am but a simple charcoal burner,” Lance replied quietly. “Such news doesn’t reach me where I live.”
My heart pattered with a new kind of fear. Did these men suspect Lance was a runaway?
“Word has it that anyone who sees a soldier but doesn’t bring him in will lose his working hand.”
Lance didn’t respond.
“I can’t afford to have my hand chopped off.” The tall woodcutter hefted his axe higher onto his shoulder.
“Neither can I,” his companion added.
“I would rather not lose mine either,” Lance said.
The woodcutters exchanged a glance. They didn’t believe a man of Lance’s physique to be anything other than who he was—a king’s guard. Even without his warrior braids and chain mail, his broad shoulders, thick muscles, and air of confidence gave him away.
From the set of Lance’s mouth, he was waging an inner war. In spite of his injured leg, he could easily strike down both woodcutters before they could blink. But he clearly didn’t want to turn upon innocent men.
And yet, what else could he do? He couldn’t allow them to run off and report him.
“Why are you passing through these parts?” one of the woodcutters demanded. “If you’re a charcoal burner, you’d have your cart loaded for market.”
What answer could Lance possibly give? From the way his fist tightened around the hilt of the knife in his belt, I suspected he could think of no ready reply and would fight even though he didn’t want to.
I scrambled across the pine needles and shoved aside the branches of spruce.
Startled gazes swung toward me as I climbed out, stood, and situated Emmeline in my arms. “The babe’s fed, and I’m ready to go.” I attempted to speak with a poor woman’s accent and hoped it was believable.
At my appearance, fear flashed in Lance’s eyes. And anger. He’d warned me not to come out, and I’d disobeyed him. I was putting myself and the princess in danger. But I couldn’t sit by and do nothing to help him.
“I told you to stay out of harm’s way,” he whispered.
“These good men won’t harm us if we speak the truth.” I hefted Emmeline to my shoulder and patted her back.
The men were watching our conversation with wide eyes, obviously not expecting a man they supposed to be a king’s guard to have a wife and babe. I could only pray that after days of travel, the grime and dust masked my nobility.
I sidled next to Lance in a way I hoped suggested intimacy. “We’re traveling home from Stefford, where I recently gave birth with the help of my family and a midwife. With all that has happened in the realm, my husband only wishes to keep me and our new babe safe.”
As though sensing my ploy, Lance wrapped his arm around me protectively. “Aye, ’tis so,” he said, the earnestness in his voice convincing even to me. “I have no wish to bring attention to my young family in these dangerous times.”
The two woodcutters nodded, their expressions transforming from mistrust to understanding. “Aye, we know it all too well.”
Lance leaned in and placed a kiss first upon Emmeline’s brow and then upon mine. Even though he was only acting the part of a doting husband, the warmth of it went straight to my heart. “They’re my life.”
Although he spoke to the woodcutters, his eyes sought mine. The sincerity in the depths reached out to soothe the rejection from earlier in the day. He might not allow himself to love me, but he would cherish me. That I knew. But was that enough?
After a few more moments of dialogue, the woodcutters continued on their way wishing the babe and me good health. As soon as they were out of sight, all pretense dropped from Lance’s expression.
“We must make haste. Now.” The urgency in his tone told me we were not out of harm’s way yet. That perhaps we never would be.
