Rendezvous With Yesterday (The Gifted Ones #2)(93)

With two arrows already imbedded in his body, he had not hesitated to throw himself in front of Beth to protect her and shield her from their attackers.

“You did well, Marcus,” Robert murmured as he cut a substantial patch from Marcus’s padded gambeson, finally exposing his wound.

Though Robert’s face and voice were calm, Beth recognized his concern.

“You did, Marcus,” she praised. Giving his undamaged shoulder a pat, she willed her hands to stop shaking and turned her attention to the arrow in his thigh. “You were very brave.” So brave he had almost lost his life trying to protect her.

Marcus sucked in a breath as Robert probed his wound. “Aye, it takes great courage to fall from one’s horse.”

Robert frowned. “Do not make light of what you did today. You protected my lady when I could not.”

Beth scowled as she parted the broken links in Marcus’s chainmail around the arrow shaft. His lady, she thought, could damned well protect herself. And even if Beth failed, she did not want anyone else to lose his life in an attempt to save her. Not Robert. Not Marcus. And not Josh.

Tears blurred her vision once more. Swearing, she blinked them back.

The trembling of her hands increased.

“Beth?”

Looking up, she found Robert and Marcus both watching her. As one, their troubled gazes dropped to her quaking fingers, then rose to her face.

“I’m fine,” she assured them. Of course, the tears over which she apparently had no control chose that moment to spill over her lashes and pour down her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she reiterated, trying to sniff them back. “It’s just…” Reaction. Delayed reaction to the terror of battle. Of almost losing Robert and Marcus. Of killing a man. And of seeing all of the bodies and body parts littering the field.

But she didn’t say that. If she did, they would fall all over themselves trying to comfort her, and then she really would go to pieces.

Instead, she motioned to Marcus’s leg. “I just can’t get his chausses off.”

A shadow fell over her. “Ah. A common complaint. Many a maid has wept on my shoulder because she could not remove Marcus’s chausses.”

Color suffused Marcus’s face at Michael’s dry remark.

And Beth was surprised to find she could laugh.

Michael squatted beside her. “Mayhap I can be of some assistance, my lady.”

She offered him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

As Michael worked, Beth’s eyes strayed to Robert and took in the immense amount of blood that coated him. “Robert, were you wounded?”

He sent her a reassuring smile. “Just a scratch, love. You can clean and bind it for me when we return to Fosterly.”

She nodded, relieved. “What about you, Michael?”

“I am well, my lady.”

“And Adam and Stephen?”



“I have heard no complaints from them, my lady. They are well.”

She glanced around, trying not to look too closely at the bodies that littered the clearing. “Where is Stephen?” Adam was busy binding the prisoners. But she didn’t see Stephen anywhere.

“Once we ensured that no more assassins lurked in the forest, he left to track down our horses.” His gaze dropped to the 9mm she had set on the grass beside her. “’Tis quite a weapon you have there, my lady.”

She exchanged a look with Robert. “Aye, it is.” And would no doubt require an explanation. The question was, how much should she explain?

The ride home seemed to last days rather than hours. Of necessity, they took it slow. But Beth knew every movement must cause Marcus agonizing pain.

One of Beth’s classmates in college had had to have an emergency appendectomy. And Beth recalled the woman confiding that every tiny little bump the car had hit on the ride home from the hospital had sent pain rippling through her.

Poor Marcus didn’t have the comfort of a cushy car seat in a shock-absorbing vehicle. He rode atop a constantly shifting and moving warhorse, Michael and Adam on either side of him ready to brace him should he begin to fall.

Beth chewed her lip the whole time, afraid the brave teenager would die before they could get him home. But they made it.

Once at Fosterly, she helped Robert and Michael clean and bandage Marcus’s wounds while Adam and Stephen saw the prisoners safely installed in the dungeon. Both Robert and Michael were remarkably proficient at rendering first aid, and Beth marveled at the difference being raised around a gifted healer had made in the two men—both in their actions and their attitudes. Before bandaging the wounds, Robert opted to coat them with healing herbs Alyssa had given him instead of honey or Beth’s ointments. Since he had used such in the past with success, Beth offered no objection. But she did encourage him to let her give his squire some ibuprofen for the pain.

“What about you?” she asked Robert. Hadn’t he mentioned receiving a scratch? She didn’t want some wound he deemed negligible to get infected and end up killing him.

“’Tis paltry,” he said with a shrug.

“I want to see it.”

Smiling, he looped an arm around her shoulders. “Come. You are weary. You may tend my wound upstairs.”

Weary didn’t begin to cover it. Once the adrenaline had worn off and her hands had stopped shaking, exhaustion had assailed her. Feet dragging, Beth felt as though she had spent the past twenty-four hours working road construction in Houston in triple-digit temperatures.