Page 5 of His Betrothed
They half limped, half staggered through the night. Hours could havepassed and Roselyn wouldn’t have known. She would have been grateful to run into one of the patrols, anything to have help with the ever-increasing burden of the sailor. She was exhausted by the time she reached Wakesfield, her father’s estate, where the outbuildings loomed in the distance.
“’Tis…not far,” she gasped.
But speech was beyond the sailor’s capability as he clung to her. She couldfeel the bones of his hips and ribs against her, as if he hadn’t eaten in a long time. By the saints, what would she do if he died?
When they reached the shed, Roselyn shouldered open the wooden door, and the sweetsmell of drying grasses from the mill pond wafted out toward them.
Without a sound, the man dropped onto his knees, then face forward into the pile of grass, almost disappearing intothe black shadows of the shed. She could see nothing without a lantern, so she rolled him onto his back and listened to his shallow breathing.
“I shall return in but a moment,” she said slowly, hoping he understood. “I’ll bring bandages and food.”
Roselyn left him and ran across the grounds, past stables and barns, the orchard and the gardens. Her father’s manor was dark and silent, with onlythe bailiff, Francis Heywood, and his family living there. The moon reflected off the panes of the windows like a single bright eye, following her.
Her parents had no idea that she’d sought refuge here. If they knew, they would banish her. She’d refused to jeopardize Francis’s position by living in the manor, and instead lived in one of the cottages.
A candle glowing in the small glass windowof her home welcomed her inside, where the faint smells of supper still hung in the air. She retrieved a bucket of hot water off a hook over the fire, then put linens, salves, blankets, bread, and a horn of drinking water in a sack she hung over her shoulder. Next she searched for someof Philip’s garments buried at the bottom of a chest.
When she returned to the shed, she set about removingthe sailor’s sodden clothes. Finding an oilskin pouch strapped to his chest, she set it aside in the grass. As she tugged down his breeches she told herself that he was just another man to heal, but feeling his naked skin beneath her hands made her oddly unsettled. After a quick, wide-eyed stare, she put a towel discreetly across his hips. Then she examined the jagged gash in his side, obviously causedby a knife or sword. He groaned when she touched his right leg, and she felt a swelling at his shin—he must have broken the bone. Though his body was leanly muscled, it was obvious that food had not been in plentiful supply on board ship, for his ribs were too evident.
Roselyn cauterized the bleeding wound in his side, cleaned the rest with wine, and applied salve. Then she bandaged his ribsand made a splint for his leg. The sailor’s trembling eased as she covered him with a blanket.
Before dawn, the man began to toss and groan in a fever-induced delirium. He seemed panicked, desperate, and she wondered what horrible memories plagued him. When he began to mumble, she froze in stunned surprise.
The words were not English, but Spanish.
She had grown up near seaports and knewthelanguage enough to recognize it, but not enough to translate.
With a chill of foreboding, she lifted the lantern and held it above him. His hair was black, un-fashionably long, and she realized now that his skin was not the pale color of an Englishman. By the saints, could he be a Spaniard?
She hung the lantern back on its hook, reminding herself that he had spoken perfect English up to thispoint.
Yet wouldn’t a Spanish spy know English? Had he arrived to ready the island for invasion?
Roselyn reined in her panicked thoughts. He had been in battle and was barely clinging to life, which was not how a spy would come ashore. He had been fleeing from the Spanish—or so he’d said. And since many Englishmen knew Spanish, she couldn’t label the man an enemy with so little proof.
“Whatis your name?” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her.
For two days the sailor moved in and out of consciousness, and Roselyn began to regret that she hadn’t brought him to her cottage. She was constantly running for supplies, for broth to dribble between his lips, for soap to clean his body and his matted hair and beard. She deliberately chose his most unconscious moments for such “baths,”then tried to tell herself thather hands weren’t shaking from performing such intimate acts on a strange man.
He occasionally mumbled unintelligible words, though once he asked a lucid question: “Do you live on my land?”
Before she could even think what to reply, he was asleep again.
But always she worried about being discovered by the Heywoods. She could never put them in the way of a possibleSpanish plot. Francis had been like a father to her, his children were practically her siblings, and they had been nothing but kind in the year since she’d fled to the Isle of Wight. She couldn’t involve them in this new problem she’d created for herself—not again. She could last until the sailor was well enough to turn over to the militia.
Late in the afternoon, Roselyn returned to the shedwith a thin stew for the sailor’s meal. She paused in the doorway, watching his face in a shaft of sunlight. The swelling from his bruises had subsided, and beneath all that long hair and beard, he seemed to be a handsome man. In his sleep, he turned his head, and his hair fell away from his brow.
She frowned, feeling a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She walked forward as if ina dream and knelt beside the man, setting her tray on the dirt floor.
Roselyn felt a dim sense of panic reach her, grasp her, until she almost couldn’t swallow. With a shaking hand, she pushed the hair off his hot forehead, as a nobleman would wear it.
Beneath the mottled purple and green bruises and the ragged beard was the face of Spencer Thornton—her betrothed.
