Page 45 of Taken By the Broken Duke
Horatio stepped forward into the path of the arc, and Juliet screamed her terror for him. He raised his arm and the blade bit into it. Horatio grunted, then grabbed for the arm that wielded the blade. But the man,Tom, was already twisting free, pulling his knife away and stabbing forward. Horatio was caught off balance, instinctively crouching to guard his wounded arm. Theknife bit into his side and then skidded across his ribs. Horatio arched his back, crying out in pain. Tom was grinning beneath the blood that poured from a broken nose and split lip. His eyes found Juliet and the grin widened.
Horatio saw and grabbed the wrist holding the knife. He seized it, lifted the arm, and twisted it hard. Tom was spun around, knife falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. There was a loud crack and Tom screamed, a sound high-pitched. Horatio released him, dropping to one knee, one hand going to his side. Tom cast one frightened look at the pair of them and then stumbled away into the undergrowth, clutching his broken arm to his chest, abandoning the weapon with which he had tried to commit murder.
Juliet was frozen but only for a moment. She scrambled to Horatio’s side, ignorant of the mud and wet foliage around her. He looked at her with eyes tight with pain and tried to grin.
“I have done worse to myself when trying to get a stone out of Thunder’s hooves,” he muttered.
“Do not be foolish! I am not some shrinking violet that faints at the sight of blood,” Juliet told him.
Blood was flowing over Horatio’s left hand which was clamped over the wound on his right side. Gently, Juliet coaxed him back until he was sitting on the ground. She drew his hand away from the wound in his side and undid his coat, pushing it aside. Then she lifted his shirt from the waistband of his breeches. It washard to see the wound properly beneath the blood that welled in it and coursed down his side.
She took off her cloak and picked up the discarded knife. With it, she cut a wide strip from the base of the cloak and wadded it up. Then she pressed it against the wound.
“Hold this in place with all your strength. Let us hope that it stops the bleeding and that the wound is not too deep,” she said.
Horatio watched her, face pale and teeth set.
“We need to get back to the castle so I can dress your wound properly,” Juliet told him.
A deafening peal of thunder drowned out Horatio’s reply. Juliet saw his lips moving but could not make out the words. The flash had come just seconds before the sound. Horatio looked around and shook his head.
“We’re a couple of miles from the castle. It isn’t safe to be in the woods with a storm over our heads. But I know somewhere close by where we can take shelter.”
He got to his knees awkwardly, one hand on the ground, the other pressed to his side. Impulsively, Juliet took his face in her hands and kissed him. It was a longer kiss than she had intended to give, but once her lips were against his, she could not stop. Quite involuntarily, her lips closed around his bottom lip and she found herself sucking it, hungrily drinking in the taste ofhim. When she opened her eyes, breath coming in short gasps, Horatio was smiling.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?” Horatio asked.
“For saving me. For not giving up on me. You should have. I will bring you nothing but pain.”
“We’ll see,” Horatio replied.
He stumbled to his feet and looked around the wood. Trees clustered around them with lush undergrowth in all directions, shaking from the impact of the rain upon leaves and fronds.
“This way,” he muttered, “hurry. The storm is directly overhead. Any one of these trees could be hit.”
Juliet followed him through the woods with flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder all around them. She flinched at each flash, expecting the peal of thunder to follow. Each time the sky lit up she looked at the tall, swaying trees with fear, anticipating the blaze of fire that would follow a strike.
Horatio stumbled, falling to his knees more than once as he led Juliet by the hand down a slope at the foot of which was a stream. It was a dozen feet wide and frothing where its swift water dashed against rocks beneath the surface. Horatio turned to follow the path of the stream, heading in the oppositedirection to its flow. The trees overhead provided a tightly meshed canopy that held off some of the rain. But the sounds of the storm reached them with unsubdued ferocity.
“Not much further,” Horatio grunted, his boots slipping in the mud and almost sending them both into the fast-flowing stream.
They rounded a bend, and before them was an open area in which the stream widened and became shallow. On either side were broad expanses of shingle and sand, the trees withdrawing. On the other side of the ford, nestled against the gentle slope of a hillside meadow, was a ramshackle stone building. It had empty windows and the remains of a square tower at one end which ended in uneven stonework not far from the broken roof.
“It looks like a church…” Juliet murmured.
“Itwas. Very old and a very long time since it was used as such. I discovered it when I was a boy. And I unearthed much older foundations next to it, where the stream has eroded away the bank. Roman, I believe. A very old place indeed.”
They splashed through the stream, coming under the full force of the storm until they were stooping through the low doorway to the old church and into cool, dark safety within.
Juliet found herself in a small chapel open to the sky at one end, where the altar would have been. Ancient pews still stood here and there, as though scattered. The wood was dusty and dry seeming. The flagstone floor was carpeted in dust, through which the tracks of animals and birds could be seen. The stormseemed to lessen its intensity when they stepped inside. The rain didn’t seem as loud or the thunder as close.
Horatio staggered to a pew and sat with a sigh. Juliet knelt before him, still holding the long-bladed knife. She set to her cloak to make bandages and dressing. Glancing around, she saw water collecting in an old pewter dish and went to collect it. Bits and pieces of pew were scattered in the dry part of the church and she built them up into a small fire. Finally, she struck the blade of the knife against a corner of upraised flagstone, throwing up sparks that eventually set light to her gathered kindling. She placed the pewter on top of the fire to allow the water to be brought to the boil.
Horatio watched with an interested expression.
“There is a school of thought that proposes boiled water is better than cold for cleaning wounds. I am unsure as to why,” Juliet murmured as she toiled away, “but I have read it. Perhaps the heat purifies the water.”
