The Knight's Broken Promise. Nicole Locke

what else to do, she slid the comb through the rest of her hair, setting the coils free. But it wasn’t enough to loosen the tension and she massaged her scalp, fingering her way through the heavy curls. Her hair felt wilder somehow, her fingers noticing textures she’d never felt before. Just as she’d never felt a man’s gaze as she felt Robert’s gaze. Just as she’d never felt her breath quicken as if she’d burned herself and kept her hand in the fire nonetheless. She felt like her hair, freed but still coiled.

      ‘How did you find the children?’ Robert’s voice was hoarse, unfocused.

      Unbalanced, it took all her concentration to understand the question. He wanted to know about the children. Not this...unknown breathlessness.

      She could talk about the children. He had helped her bury the dead and hunt more food. Her breath returned to normal. He deserved some of the truth.

      ‘I arrived maybe only a few hours after the English left,’ she replied.

      He sat down beside her, his legs bent, his arms and hands hanging loosely between his knees. He was not touching or facing her, but it did not matter. She felt him beside her.

      ‘In my hurry down the hill, I hurt my ankle, but I still walked through the valley.’ She did not want to describe what she had seen. He had been to the valley, he knew what was there.

      ‘I heard Maisie before I saw her. She was in the last hut and under some torn blankets and an upturned chest. They were unwashed horse blankets. I guess the English dinna want to bother with them.’

      Even though she had not seen them, she had no doubt it was the English who had destroyed Doonhill. She clenched the comb and let the sharp points press into her palm.

      ‘I grabbed her, held her. She had been my only hope. There was nothing else...salvageable.’ She breathed in raggedly. ‘I went back up the hill to get my spooked horse. He was near a small copse of trees. By then my ankle hurt and I was grateful he had not gone any further.’

      ‘That was when I saw movement in the trees. I was scared—I knew the English had just left. But it was the children. Flora holding Alec’s hand and Creighton standing with his fists at his sides.’

      ‘You did not mention your kin.’

      She shoved the comb back into her satchel. ‘Aye, I was coming to visit my sister, Irvette, her husband and their daughter.’

      ‘Maisie,’ he said, no question in his voice. ‘Maisie is their daughter.’

      ‘Aye.’ There was no need to hide the truth.

      ‘You buried your sister and her husband.’

      She nodded. At night she had buried them and so many others. It was at night she had felt the heavy weight of both the living and the dead depending on her. Only then did she allow herself to feel her grief and her anger.

      ‘I couldn’t leave Irvette like that and I wouldn’t leave her husband, either.’

      ‘You stayed to bury the rest because of the children?’

      ‘Partly, but that’s not all.’ She tried to close out the vision of the night and her long trek down the hill, where the wind did not blow so hard and the moonlight obscured the remains of the village.

      ‘I have nightmares now. Not just because of what I saw, but—’ She stopped. It had been long, gruesome work moving the bodies to the garden. ‘I could hear the dead urging me to dig, you ken? I dug so hard the blisters on my hands broke, but the pain was sharp and dulled the ache in my ankle, allowing me to work faster.

      ‘Yet I couldn’t dig fast enough. Even in the cool of the night, I could smell the bodies and the flies swarmed. I moved, but the flies stayed on me as if they were waiting for me, as well.’

      She shook her head. ‘But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was the sound the bodies made when they thudded into the grave I made.’

      His gaze remained on the fire and she saw only his profile. She didn’t know what he was thinking.

      ‘I couldn’t make the graves deep enough to silence the sound,’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t the only sound they made.’

      His brow furrowed, but he did not stop her speech.

      ‘I know you’ll think me mad, but I heard their voices, faint, coming from some other place, but loud enough for me to hear.’

      She had to say it. ‘They thanked me,’ she confided. These were her most private thoughts, so personal she hadn’t thought she’d tell anyone, but somehow she knew he would understand what she spoke. ‘Thanked me for taking care of their children when they nae longer could.’

      Robert’s hands jerked, but he remained silent. If he wasn’t sitting next to her, she would swear he wasn’t listening. How could he not hear what she was saying? Were her fears so easily dismissed?

      ‘But to what end?’ She gave a sort of hiccupped sob. ‘You’re not even going to help us.’

      She was not mortified that her voice broke. She was beyond any pride. She was desperate. And afraid. And grieving. And he was going to leave her like this.

      He breathed in raggedly. ‘This afternoon, I told you I was not helping you.’

      She did not need reminders of the afternoon’s conversation.

      ‘But Alec came and you played with him,’ he continued. ‘Then you played with Maisie, too, and cared for Creighton and Flora. You smiled at them, gave them affection and yet, I knew you were distressed.’

      ‘Ach, there’s nae sense in self-pity.’ She batted at her cheeks and wished the tell-tale sign of any weakness would go away. ‘I’ve never shirked a chore in my life. And the children mean more than that to me. Much more. I made them a promise and I’m keeping it, with or without your help.’

      ‘I’ll take you to the nearest village.’ His voice was rushed with the release of his breath. It was as if the words escaped before he could stop them. ‘No further,’ he said more firmly. ‘It’ll be enough to get you an extra horse and further supplies.’

      Instead of relief, her heart stabbed and tingled. He had given her some reprieve from her hardship ahead of her, but she knew it had been reluctant. It just added guilt to her already heavy heart. But she was in no position to refuse. She nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands.

      ‘Aye,’ she whispered. ‘Only to the nearest village.’

      He stood and moved as if he would leave, but then he stopped.

      ‘Gaira?’

      She craned her neck to look up at him. His back was almost to her and he was looking over his shoulder. His body was fine and broad. She could see how his tunic stretched taut over the blades of his arm muscles, how his waist tapered to hose that were wrapped around legs sculpted from endurance and strength. The dim flickering fire did not allow her to see all the features of his face, but it did not matter. She felt his eyes, felt the return of the heat in them.

      She felt her own body respond. She felt the sluggish heat of her blood, the shallow breath fill her lungs. Her clothing felt tight and confining.

      It had to be her grief that left her feeing this raw, this open. She felt vulnerable to him, to thoughts he would not say.

      ‘Aye?’ she finally answered.

      He did not touch her, but he might as well have been caressing her as the fire did. His eyes moved as if they were his hands. Not soft caresses of sight, but rough, consuming strokes of heat.

      ‘While I am with you,’ he spoke, his voice firm, ‘do not unbind your hair again.’

      She hoped the dim fire hid her blush.