Free The Kindling by Tamara Leigh

yours.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Regardless, ‘tis understandable why you were moved to act as you did.”
    For a moment, the light that brightened her eyes made it seem she would agree, but then she lowered her lids. “Nay, it is not understandable. I should not have done it, but…” Her eyes sprang open, and there was that fiery light again. “He, a man of the sword, followed the brigands camp to camp, witnessed my beatings, and yet refuses to say why he but watched—why he did naught.”
    Now her assault upon Durand was understandable.
    Color flooding her cheeks that Abel wished he did not find enticing, she continued, “All he tells is that he had his reasons.”
    Despite his dislike of the man whom he had once called ‘friend,’ Abel forced himself to acknowledge that the knight had been instrumental in ending the terror the brigands had worked upon the barony of Abingdale—so much that, had he not risked death by revealing himself to Baron Lavonne, Beatrix and many others would now be dead.
    Helene’s shoulders rose and fell as she drew deep breaths as if to calm herself, and her hands that had grasped at and bunched her skirts released them. She stepped nearer until all that separated her from Abel was the edge of the mattress. “Yet you tried to aid me.” Her voice was nearly level again. “And without even a sword at your side.”
    Recalling their meeting in the wood, he tasted again the bile of helplessness upon which he had nearly choked when he had seen the reason she had refused to flee with him. “I failed you,” he said.
    “It could not be helped.”
    He knew that, had repeated it over and again each time guilt rode his back, but still he felt the weight of the choices he had made that had caused her to fall victim to Sir Robert’s fists.
    “Think no more on it,” she said.
    Piqued that she should read him so well, he determined to turn their conversation back to the person with whom it had begun. “I cannot speak for Sir Durand and his reason for not aiding you during your captivity, but you should know it was he who freed the Wulfrith knight held by that miscreant, Sir Robert, and that when my brother’s knight made it to Broehne Castle, he revealed the location of the camp where you and Aldous Lavonne were left to die.”
    Her eyes widened.
    “In the end, Sir Durand did aid you—and revealed Sir Robert’s plan to attack Castle Soaring.” And that was all he could stomach to tell of the knight’s fine qualities, for they had been self serving. “Now, I am sure you would like to be done with your ministrations and seek your bed.”
    After a long moment, during which she surely struggled to suppress whatever new questions had arisen, she turned to the tray.
    She spoke no further word, hurriedly cleaning his wounds and applying her salves with hands and fingers that Abel tried to imagine belonging to a kindly crone. He even closed his eyes the better to convince himself of it. But, as was becoming habit with Helene, he failed.
    ‘Tis only desire. A faint and passing attraction.
    “Still you will deny me your back?” she asked, breath feathering his face as she smoothed the pleasingly scented ointment into his cheek and down his jaw.
    He raised his lids and, when she finally set her gaze to his, said. “I could not rest as comfortably as I do if that injury was not sufficiently healed.”
    “It would seem, but I would not be doing my duty if I did not verify it.”
    “Then verify.” He leaned forward, putting his face so near hers that she jerked back as if for fear he meant to force an intimacy upon her. As he shifted on the mattress to give her access to his back, Abel wondered if he could have resisted a taste of her mouth had she not put space between him and temptation. And what of her? Would she have let him kiss her? Would she have returned his kiss?
    “Is it your upper back or lower?” she asked.
    “Upper—right side.”
    Rather than lift the hem of his tunic as