Page 79 of The Herald's Heart
Talon towered above the priest. “You are trained in healing. Save her.”
Timoras took one look at Larkin’s bloodied back. “I can do naught but prepare her soul for judgment.”
Talon grabbed the priest by the front of his robe and lifted him so they were face to face. “Do not tell me she dies. I will not let her die.”
The priest trembled and shook, but his words were clear. “’Tis not for you to say.”
“Bah.” He tossed the holy man across the room and turned back to Larkin, wondering how best to stop the bleeding. The certainty touched him that his hope of heaven and happiness on earth hung by a thread, and he had little or no ability to keep that thread from breaking.
Timoras grabbed his arm. “Nothing can be done. She has lost too much blood.”
The words penetrated Talon’s hearing, but he would not believe them. If he did, they might come true. He shrugged off the priest’s grasp. “Say your prayers then, Father, but not here in this room. And before you do, send for Mother Clement. I would have her tell me all is hopeless before I believe the doom you say.”
“Here, Talon.”
He found clean rags shoved into his hands and raised his eyes to see Amis’s steady promise of help staring at him.
“We’ll bind her wounds until the abbess can get here.” Amis’s voice halted the inner terror. They worked silently, wrapping and lifting, then repeating the actions, until all of the wounds were covered.
That done, they checked once more for other injuries and found a long cut just above her hairline. Talon had thought the blood in her hair came from the stab wounds. He swallowed at the sight of the oozing gash. He’d seen men die from far less. Her life was slipping from his grasp. He forced energy into hands gone nerveless with fear and set to cleaning and binding the gash as best he could, relying on Amis to manage everything else.
Servants came and went, bringing all that he needed. Amis relayed news from each person.
“Cleve sent for the abbess and begs speech with you at your first chance.”
“Very well.”
“The priest is gone.”
“Better. I’ll not have him in this room again.”
“I’ll see that Cleve gives the order.”
Talon looked at Amis. “Le Hourde did this.”
“I wish I had doubts, but I do not.”
“Why?”
“When Le Hourde finally believed I was your rival, he felt comfortable drinking with me. My head is harder than his. He said things that implied he’d done a great deal of killing for the earl, and not all of it on the battlefield. He passed out before I could get more out of him. By the time I woke this morning, he was gone. I rode posthaste to tell you I’d lost him. We’ve been too busy searching for him for me to give you this information. While it isn’t a confession, it was enough for me to encourage your idea to lay a snare for our prey in the caves. I suspected that Le Hourde would be the rabbit who tripped the snare.”
When they found the baron, Talon vowed to strangle him. Hanging was too good for the man. “Do the men continue to search for Le Hourde?”
“Aye. If you have no more need of me, I will join the search.”
“Go.” Talon sat, praying, willing Larkin to stir, to open her beautiful blue eyes and smile at him. To curse him. To do something. But she just lay there, her breath shallow, her body still.
Was he to lose her now more surely than any church law or lack of trust could separate her from him? “I’ll not suffer your lack of faith any longer.” Her last words to him echoed in his mind and pummeled his heart. She’d been right. He’d not trusted her when she told him the truth of her identity. He’d failed to trust her when she said she’d not murdered the earl. He had not even trusted her ability to save their lives in the sea. He’d thought it better to drown to ensure she could live than trust her with the information that he could not swim. He’d not trusted in, not even considered, the loyalty that would not let her abandon him, even after he released her and gave himself to the waves.
Time and again, he’d had the chance to have faith in her word and her abilities. Out of arrogance, he’d failed her on every occasion. ’Twas amazing in light of his mistrust that she’d given herself to him. No doubt she’d been overcome by their lucky survival and had forgotten the consequences. He certainly had not bothered to remember that legally she was his stepmother. They had risked their souls for passion. In taking that risk, she’d given him a gift he knew he did not deserve. He did not now deserve the gift of her life, yet he prayed for that gift with every bit of faith he could muster.
Behind him, the solar door opened.
“Heavenly Father, forgive us both and let her survive. I’ll not abuse her trust ever again. I’ll remove myself from her presence, take pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and dedicate myself to your service. Hawksedge and Rosewood will be hers, for I will not need a home. Please Lord, save her life.”
He felt rather than saw or heard Mother Clement move into the room and kneel beside him in prayer. Grateful as he was for the abbess’s support and skill, he wanted nothing but Larkin. Larkin alive and well, even if his vows meant they never spoke or touched again.
