Free The Kindling by Tamara Leigh Page B

face when you and Baron Lavonne came for the old baron and me was true though I knew naught could come of it.”
    Due to the disparity in their ranks?
    “And less so now, Sir Abel.”
    Because of what he had become—rather, no longer was, as evidenced by the Wulfrith dagger’s place of dishonor at the bottom of a chest of garments.
    She jutted her chin. “Drink so that we might put this night behind us.”
    Feeling the day’s every hour, he drained the goblet and handed it to her.
    She took it, set it alongside her pots, then lifted the tray and carried it across the room to the other tray that held the remains of his meal. With her back to him, she combined the contents of the two trays and fit the emptied one beneath the burdened one. Next, she fed the brazier.
    Not until she took the trays and crossed to the door did Abel remember what needed to be told for Beatrix’s sake. The healer would not like it. Indeed, if not that her hands were full, she might strike him as she had done Durand.
    “There is something I must needs confess,” he called.
    She turned. “Aye?”
    “I deceived you that you might lead me down a path longer than the one I was upon.”
    Her eyebrows drew near. “Pray, Sir Abel, do not make pretty words of an ugly deed.”
    He smiled apologetically. “My sister, Beatrix, has not visited my chamber this eve.”
    “What has she to do with—?”
    As realization transformed her face, he said, “’Twas my mother who visited and shared Sir Durand’s revelation that caused you to follow him to the kitchen. Ere you told that you had struck him, that is all I knew.”
    Despite the length of the chamber, he heard her sharply drawn breath.
    “Forgive me,” he said, “but just as you have questions you wish Sir Durand to answer, so I would know what goes in my absence.”
    “By trickery!”
    He did not like the word, but he nodded. “In this matter and under these circumstances, the most expedient means of keeping myself apprised of events.”
    “Pity that a knight—a Wulfrith knight—is reduced to such,” she snapped, then turned, stepped into the passageway, and once more left the door open behind her. And Abel to his brooding.

Chapter Eight

    Unless one knew where to look and was attuned to her touch and the air about her, a person would not likely realize how affected Helene still was by what had transpired on the night past. Or so Abel thought as she efficiently and, with few words, performed her ministrations.
    He had seen the darker shadows beneath her eyes when her surprise at finding him fully clothed this morn had made her halt just inside the chamber, had noted the jerk of her hands as she chose her pots and lifted and pushed aside his garments, had felt the tremor of her fingers as she applied her salves, had heard her uneven breathing. And, when she had handed him the goblet of milk and he had glared, he had sensed how tempted she was to empty it in his lap.
    Helene of Tippet remained deeply unsettled. And he could not fault her.
    “Ere I leave you to break your fast,” she said, “there is one more thing that falls to me to do.”
    He drew back the hand he had reached to the platter of viands and looked up at where she stood alongside his chair. Something about her compressed lips warned that he would not like this one more thing of hers. “Aye?”
    She turned back a folded cloth set alongside the platter. “I borrowed this from Lady Beatrix.”
    He did not hesitate to take the mirror she handed him, though only because he was certain it was what she expected him to do. Fortunately, as he turned the silver surface toward his face, she crossed to the window and busied herself with folding back and hooking the shutters, granting him privacy in which to gaze upon his ruined countenance.
    Feeling strain in his jaw, he looked at the reflection with which she insisted he become familiar. The mirror was small enough that, as near as he held it, he saw only the right side of his