Page 49 of Anice’s Bargain

“We were reiving a castle, one of the ones in the Middle lands. Some nobleman’s home with fat cows and so many well-fed soldiers, we assumed he wouldna notice a few head of cattle had gone missing.”

Anice gave a skeptical lift of her brow. “They always notice.”

He shrugged. “Aye, and they did. A fight broke out. I had an especially large cow on a line and was trying to tug the obdurate beast from its pen when I heard a voice telling me to stop. I swung about and saw a lad there, nay older than yer Leila. The sword in his hand shook, but he dinna back down from me.”

James could still see the lad in his mind’s eye, the scruff of blonde hair falling over either side of his small face, his glinting dark eyes narrowed with stoic resolve.

“One of our men saw him and ran at the lad in the haze of blood lust, as some men in battle are wont to do.” As the words spilled from James’s mouth, he hated the taste of them being spoken out loud. “I saw what my brethren was about to do, and I stood in front of the boy to protect him.”

James shifted his gaze from Anice’s upturned face and focused instead on the whorls of blue and white paint on the wooden underside of the bed’s canopy. “I killed him. He was my father’s own man, and I killed him. I dinna want to, but he wouldna back down. If I hadna done what I did, the lad would have died.”

Anice said nothing, but her slender hand slipped into his and squeezed.

“I couldna believe what I’d done.” James closed his eyes, but it only intensified the vision. His father’s man pitching forward, face registering surprise, and one final fogged exhale as his face fell into the snow. “I was so stunned that I dropped my blade and staggered back. The lad was emboldened by my being disarmed and distracted. He lunged at me with his sword thrust in front of him like the warrior he would someday be.”

James pointed to the heavy strip of scarred flesh on his chest. “He got me right here. I dinna fight back. It was daft, but all I could think was that he was only a lad, even as I fell.” He smirked. “Of all the battles I’ve fought, and all the fierce warriors I’ve slain, it was a mere lad who finally brought me to ground.”

Anice’s graceful fingers swept over the pinkened skin of James’s scar, and he did not stop her. What did it matter, when the most vulnerable part of him had been bared?

She lifted her hand to his face and gently turned him toward her once more. “You saved that boy. You did what was right; he was simply scared. It’s why he attacked.”

James nodded. “Aye, I realize that. I think it’s what stayed my hand from defending myself.”

Her touch returned to the scar in a delicate caress. “This is the kind of wound that could have ended a man.”

“It almost did with me.”

“Tell me,” she whispered. “I want to know all of it.”

With the worst of the awful tale already told, the rest came out with surprising ease. “I woke up in a feather bed with a heavy fur coverlet and a man in fine clothes sitting in a chair in the room. He told me I’d been struck down by his son for trying to steal the lad’s favorite cow, and I’d nearly died from my wound, and then from a fever after that. I’d been there nearly three weeks and was only just beginning to rouse.”

Anice’s fingers stroked a gentle, soothing caress over the scar, as if doing so might erase it from his skin. “Though you attempted to steal from him, he still saved you?”

James nodded. “He saw good in me, he said.” The familiar tightness ached in his chest, the one that came from being trusted so implicitly. “He’d been too far to aid his son as he’d been locked in battle himself, but he witnessed the entirety of…what I’d done. He kept me in his castle for the two months it took me to recover, to protect me from any who might have seen me kill my own man.”

“He sounds very honorable.” Anice’s fingers stopped their thoughtful glide over his skin. “Who was he?”

“The Earl of Bastionbury. And, aye, he is a verra good man.” James nodded. “He showed me that there are ways to live that dinna involve stealing or ransom. Land that could be tilled, the bounty sold. My people could have a life of honesty with hard work.”

A smile whispered over Anice’s lips in recognition. “Lord Bastionbury is a good man.” The ghost of the smile disappeared. “That is why our betrothal was so attractive to you, then. For the land.”

James caressed her face and tried to ignore the hurt shimmering deep in the blue depths of her crystal eyes. “Ye’re more than just land and wealth to me, Anice.” He cradled her cheek against his palm. “Ye’re hope.”