Denise Lynn - The Warrior's Winter Bride

She drew in a long, deep breath, filling her lungs near to bursting before letting it out ever so slowly, over and over until the trick her father had taught her so many years ago when she was a frightened child cleared her mind and calmed her spirit.

Once certain she could function with some semblance of reason, she sat up.

The door to the cabin opened, letting in a glimmer of evening light and air—icy-cold blasts of frigid air, along with Dunstan’s man... Matthew, Sir Matthew as she’d discovered yesterday when she’d overheard the other men aboard the ship talking just outside the cabin.

‘Are you hungry?’ Without waiting for her answer, he handed her a hunk of dry, coarse bread and a skin filled with what she knew was wine so sour that it rivalled any verjuice she’d ever encountered.

Shivering, she frowned. It had been so hot beneath the covers that she’d been unprepared for such a cold, bracing wind.

No. Her heart nearly leapt from her chest.

Setting the offered meal on the floor, she turned towards Dunstan and jerked the covers from his chest.

‘What is wrong?’ Sir Matthew was at her side in an instant, crowding her, hovering like a mother fretting over her sick child.

‘I’m not sure.’ She placed her palm against Dunstan’s forehead and then his cheek. Biting back an oath at the unnatural warmth of his skin, she ordered, ‘Bring the lamp over here.’

To her surprise he did as she’d requested and held the lamp over the pallet, allowing the light to fall on a flushed, sweat-soaked Dunstan.

Sir Matthew cursed, before asking, ‘How long has he been like this?’

‘He was fine when last I checked.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Tight concern tinged his question.

Isabella raised a hand. ‘Give me a moment to think.’

‘His wound is most likely infected.’

What she didn’t require were statements of the obvious. The need to get Sir Matthew out of the cabin prompted her to make him useful. ‘Get me a knife and have someone heat some water. Find something I can use for new bindings. And if no one aboard this ship has any healing herbs, then you must make port immediately.’

‘We will be at Dunstan in another two or three days.’

She turned her head to glare at him. ‘He could be dead by then.’

The man tossed her his dagger, placed the lamp on a stool near the pallet and then thankfully left without another word.

Isabella turned to the task at hand—making sure Dunstan lived so he could die by her hand at a time she deemed appropriate and in a manner that suited her. Kneeling over him, she slipped the dagger beneath the bandages, prepared to strip them from his body, then hesitated, fearful of what she might see. What if...?

‘Can you not decide?’

Startled by hearing him speak for the first time in three days, she jumped, nicking the tip of the dagger against his chest.

Fingers closed around her wrist. ‘I would prefer death by infection, thank you.’

Isabella lifted her gaze to Dunstan’s face. ‘You are awake.’

He stared at her with bloodshot eyes that never once wavered. And for a moment—the very briefest of moments—Isabella wished they might have met under different circumstances.

With his squared jawline, slightly crooked nose, even teeth and full lower lip, the man needed only a bath, a change of clothes and a razor to be what her sister, Beatrice, would call a very fine figure of a man. A description that would have drawn a soft, agreeing laugh from her.

Neither the fading bruise from the black eye she’d given him, nor the small gash running across his cheek from when he fell, lessened the more-than-pleasing appearance.

And his voice... Oh, how that deeply rugged voice brushed so easy across her ears before flowing deeper to touch her soul. Even the most pious of women would throw all thought of morals and chastity into the breeze just to hear another word fall from his mouth.

Dunstan’s eyebrows arched as if he somehow sensed the direction of her thoughts and Isabella felt her cheeks flame with embarrassment, shame and not a small measure of self-loathing.

Sweet heavens, where had her mind flown?

The man was nothing more than a savage beast. He’d captured her, taken her from her home, from safety and caused her father’s death. And here she sat like some besotted girl mooning over this murderer’s looks and the sound of his voice?

‘You are still here.’

Isabella blinked at his statement. ‘Since Sir Matthew stopped me from jumping overboard, where else would I be?’

Instead of answering her, Dunstan tugged slightly at her arm. ‘What is this?’

It was her arm. Was he seeing things? What did he think...oh...he meant the knife. ‘I need to remove your bandages.’

He released her wrist, then nodded.

‘Does that mean I should continue?’

‘If you want.’

‘Well, no. I don’t want to do anything for you.’ A quick glance towards the still-open door assured her Sir Matthew was not standing there. ‘I wasn’t given a choice.’

‘No, of course you...’

His words trailed off and Isabella realised he’d once again fallen prey to the beckoning spell of the sleeping drug. It was to be expected since very few people could resist the siren’s call of poppy juice.

She cut away at the bandages, peeling them back as she did so. Holding her breath, she focused on the wound left by the arrow.

To her relief, while it was an angry red and puffy, there weren’t any telltale dark lines of advanced infection.

She’d need only to reopen the wounds front and back, let them drain and after cleaning them out, pack them with some herbs—if Sir Matthew found any. And if not, perhaps that verjuice they called wine would be strong enough to burn away any evil humours.

The bigger concern was his fever.

‘What worries you so?’

And once again Dunstan was awake. As much as she’d like to rail at him for killing her father and kidnapping her, she knew that within moments he’d only fall asleep again and not hear a word she uttered.

In hopes that he might be alert enough to assist in his own recovery, she said, ‘You have a fever and it seems there is nothing aboard this ship to help banish it.’

‘Beneath my chainmail.’

She looked around the cabin. Not locating his mail, Isabella asked, ‘And where is your armour?’

‘Why would you want my lord’s armour?’ Sir Matthew asked, walking into the cabin carrying a bucket of steaming water, a length of linen and another skin of wine.

‘He claims there are some herbs beneath it.’

Without voicing anything more than undecipherable grumbles to himself, Matthew put down the items he carried and headed out of the cabin once more.

In his absence, Isabella went to work on Dunstan’s injuries. By the unevenness of his breathing, she assumed he was floating in that twilight region between sleep and wakefulness.

Hoping her assumption was correct, she pushed at his shoulder, asking, ‘Can you roll on to your side?’

Thankfully, even though he groaned while doing so, he complied. By the time Sir Matthew returned, she was nearly finished.

He tossed a pouch on the pallet. ‘Here. This is what I found.’

Isabella shook off a thin coating of sand before opening the small leather bag. She didn’t need to ask about the sand since her father and brother stored their armour in barrels of sand when out to sea. Although, the herb pouch would have been in their cabin. The all-heal herbs inside were wrapped in waxed leather to keep them dry.

She tossed a pinch into a cup, then extended it to Dunstan’s man. ‘Could you pour a bit of the wine in here?’

While he did that, she put a larger pinch into a second cup and used the pommel of his dagger to grind the herb into a powder. Adding some of the still-warm seawater, she made a poultice, then applied it to his wounds, holding it in place with the bindings she’d made from the linen.