The Norman's Bride. Terri Brisbin

“My thanks for looking after our guest.” The urge to sweep them out the door grew in him and they must have sensed his desire for them to leave. With a few murmured words of leaving, they rushed out of the cottage and strode off in the direction of the keep and village.

      “John’s father made this chair for me. Wenda thought it might be more comfortable to sit in rather than lying on the pallet.”

      “’Twould seem to make sense. This gives you much more support than the bench.” William sat on the bench himself. Looking over her face once more, he was surprised again by her appearance now.

      “Now, without the blood and stitches to hide them, you are taking note of all of my flaws?” Her lips trembled with a nervous smile and he knew his answer was important to her.

      Such things were of importance to a woman.

      A woman! Dear God!

      He stood and began to clean up the bowls from the table, thinking about this situation as he moved. Hiding beneath the blood and healing for these weeks, right under his gaze and care, was a woman, complete with the fair face, soft, full body and intelligent, quick mind God had given her. Their world had shifted with his notice of her gender. How had he fooled himself for this long?

      He had certainly known in those first weeks, when he took care of her needs during the darkest of nights. He had seen and touched most of her body, but realized now that her unfamiliarity and his despair of her not surviving had allowed him to ignore the fact of her femaleness.

      “Royce? Have no fear, for Wenda has told me the truth of my injuries.” Isabel lifted her hand to her face and outlined the scar that had cut so deeply into her skin that it reached down to the bone beneath. “’Twill fade, she said, but never be gone. And even now the hair at my scalp grows in white.”

      He turned at her words to see what she spoke of. He moved out of the sun’s rays, which poured through the open door, and stood next to her. His eyes could see nothing but the even blackness of her hair and it reminded him, in its brightness, of the shiny ebony and onyx jewels he’d seen on the queen. Isabel lifted her chin a bit and pointed at the place where the scar ran into her hair and disappeared. A tuft of white now grew from there.

      A mark to remind her of the terrible battle for survival that she fought and won. He didn’t realize he’d said the words aloud until she replied.

      “I am ever the warrior?”

      “A warrior of some success, it would seem. Do not belittle your survival or the strength of will it took on your part.”

      “Or your part in my survival.”

      This was getting much too dangerous a way of discussing the simple topic of her scars. He needed to bring the conversation and situation under control…under his control.

      “I am happy I was able to bring you in from the forest and get Wenda’s aid for you.”

      She scrutinized his face for a moment and nodded. “You have my thanks for that and more.”

      Knowing when to retreat was as important in a battle as knowing when to fight. And William knew, as soon as he was looking at her and noticing her features, her face, her hair and her form that he was in over his head. ’Twas as if he could feel the crack in the shell of his well-ordered, well-controlled, empty life begin in his soul. Once begun, ’twould matter not if the break came from within or without.

      “If you need naught from me, I must return to the keep.”

      William waited for her reply and, when she shook her head, he searched through his storage chest for something, anything, that made it look as though he had come to retrieve it. Taking out a small wooden box, he turned to her.

      “I told Lord Orrick I would bring this to him. I shall return later.”

      He left the cottage and made it into the trees before the mocking words in his mind clarified how low he’d sunk.

      Coward was repeated but joined by another word.

      Liar.