Free Walpurgis Night by Katherine Kingston Page B

but better than naught under the circumstances. “I owe you thanks and more. Whatever my father’s house can provide for you, you’ll have. Ask what you will of us.”
    Fianna thought of the one request she wanted more than anything to make of him. She couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right to ask him to give up his dream to indulge hers. But oh how she wanted to beg him to stay. Stay here, stay with her. “I’ll think on it,” she said instead.
    He nodded and left. While Ranulf slept, she changed the dressing on the wound again. The redness and swelling around the injury had retreated. The red streaks radiating from it were fading. His fever remained mild.
    The woman who’d been with him while they slept yesterday came in bearing a tray of food, which included breakfast for her and a cup of broth for Ranulf . Fianna ate the bread and meat enthusiastically. Ranulf woke again shortly after she finished. He spoke to her, but without Henrik to translate, she had no idea what he said.
    “Can you understand me?” she asked in her language, spacing out the words to make them easier to understand.
    His blank look and a shake of the head told her he didn’t comprehend. She held up the cup of broth and made a drinking motion herself before she moved it toward him. He nodded and tried to push himself up. He looked surprised to find himself so weak he could barely move at all.
    Fianna sat next to him and lifted his head so that it rested on her knees. She helped him take a few swallows of the broth before he turned away from it, indicating he’d had enough.
    Henrik returned with his father and several other people following behind. There was much chatter, laughter and excitement among them when they saw Ranulf was awake and lucid. Fianna backed away, giving them room to crowd around the patient.
    “Tell them they must not stay too long and tire him out,” she requested of Henrik . “He still needs rest to speed his recovery.”
    Henrik nodded. After speaking with a couple of the people present, he came back to her, took her arm and nodded to the other room. Before they could leave, though, Henrik’s father came over, took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. He said a few words in Norse that she could tell were meant to convey his gratitude.
    “Tell him I did only what is in me to do as a healer,” she asked.
    He nodded and passed that on to his father. The older man said something more and kissed her on the forehead.
    “As I said earlier, you have but to ask whatever reward you will of him,” Henrik translated.
    “I am giving it thought,” she said. When his father returned to the group crowding around the bed, she and Henrik escaped into the other room.
    “You’ve eaten?” he asked. When she said she had, he said, “Come with me, then. We both need sleep. It was a hard night.”
    “Aye,” she agreed. “But worth it.”
    “Very much so.”
    Fianna went with Henrik back to his home. Though his touch, as always, evoked that deep body hunger for him, she was too exhausted to do anything about it, and she suspected he must be too. Still, it felt wonderful to rest with his body curled around hers, his arm under her neck, her back pressed against his chest. She slept deeply.
    When she woke, he was already up. She didn’t see him in the room, so she rose and got dressed. He wasn’t in the large central room, either. Just as she was about to return to the house where Ranulf lay, he came back.
    He smiled at her. “ Ranulf continues to improve. He was complaining about the broth and saying he wanted real food.”
    “That’s good, but do not let him go to it too quickly.”
    “I told them what you said about it.”
    “Good.”
    He was watching her with a lazy grin that held a wicked hint of mischief in its depths as well. “Did you rest well?” he asked.
    “Aye. Very well.”
    “Would you like to take a steam bath?” He paused a moment and there was a hot promise in his tone and in his expression when he