Susan Wiggs - The Maiden's Hand

She tossed her head, the dark coif fluttering behind her. With a squeeze of his legs, Oliver guided his horse past her to investigate the distressed travelers.

The boxy coach had been traveling toward town. Rather than being pulled by big country nags or oxen, it was yoked to a pair of rather delicate-looking riding mounts. Curious.

Behind the coach was a bridge spanning a shallow, rocky creek. Apparently the conveyance had cleared the bridge and become stuck in the muddy berm at the roadside.

“Hello!” Oliver called out, craning his neck to see into the small square window. He waved his hand to show he had no weapon drawn, for travelers tended to be wary of highwaymen.

“Are you mired, then?” he shouted. No response. He drew up beside the coach, frowning at the horses. Indeed they were not draft horses. Smallish heads indicated a strain of Barbary blood.

“Hello?” Oliver twisted in the saddle to send Kit a quizzical look.

The coach door swung open. A blade sliced out and just barely caressed the nape of his neck.

“It’s a trap!” Oliver dismounted, drawing his rapier even before his feet hit the ground. Kit did likewise.

To Oliver’s dismay, Lark leaped out of her saddle, lifted her skirts and rushed toward the coach. Three men, wearing the tattered garb of discharged soldiers, swarmed out. From the grim expressions on their faces, they seemed bent on murder.

Oliver flourished his sword and feinted back from one of the soldiers, a bearded fellow. “I say!” Oliver parried a blow and sidestepped a thrust. “We’re not highwaymen.”

His answer was a wind-slicing front cut that slit his doublet. A bit of wool stuffing bulged from the tear.

A feeling of unholy glee came over him. He loved this feeling—the anticipation of a battle joined, the lure of physical challenge.

“You’re good,” he said to the bearded one. “I was hoping you would be.”

Danger always had this effect on him. It was a battle lust he had learned to crave. Some would call it courage, but Oliver knew himself well enough to admit that it was pure recklessness. Dying in a sword fight was so much more picaresque than gasping his last in a sickroom.

“En garde, you stable-born dunghill groom,” he said gleefully. “You’ll not have the virtue of this lady fair but with a dead man’s blessing.”

The soldier seemed unimpressed. His blade came at Oliver with raging speed. Oliver felt the fire of exhilaration whip through him. “Kit!” he yelled. “Are you all right?”

He heard a grunt, followed by the sliding sound of locking blades. “A fine predicament you’ve gotten us into,” Kit said.

Oliver fought with all the polish he could muster under the circumstances. He would have liked to tarry, to toy with his opponent and test his skills to the limit, but he was worried about Lark. The foolish woman seemed intent on investigating the coach.

The soldier came on with a low blow. Like a morris dancer, Oliver leaped over the blade. Taking swift advantage of the other’s imbalance, Oliver went in for the kill.

With his rapier, he knocked the weapon from the soldier’s hand. The sword thumped into the muddy road. Then Oliver whipped out his stabbing dagger and prepared to—

“My lord, are you not a Christian?” piped a feminine voice beside him. “‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

His hesitation cost him a victory. The soldier leaped away and in seconds had one arm hooked around Lark from behind.

“I’ll break her neck,” the burly man vowed. “Take one step closer, and I’ll snap it like a chicken bone.” Stooping, he snatched up his fallen sword.

“Don’t harm the girl!” one of the other soldiers cried.

“Divinity of Satan,” Oliver bellowed in a fury. “I should have sent you to hell when I had the chance.”

Glaring at Oliver, Lark’s captor drew back his sword arm.

“Thou shalt not kill, either,” Lark stated. As Oliver watched, astonished, she brought up her foot and slammed it down hard on the soldier’s instep. At the same time her pointed little elbow jabbed backward. Hard. If the blow had met his ribs, it would have left him breathless. But he was much taller than Lark and her aim was low, and when it connected, Oliver winced just from watching.

The man doubled up, unable to speak. Then, clutching himself, he half limped and half ran into the woods beyond the road.

Kit’s opponent, bleeding now, backed away. Swearing, he leapfrogged onto one of the horses, cut the traces and galloped off.

Oliver raced toward the third soldier. This one fled toward the remaining horse, but Lark planted herself in his path.

“No!” Oliver screamed, picturing her mown down like a sheaf of wheat. But as Lark’s hands grasped at the mercenary’s untidy tunic, he merely shoved her aside, mounted, spurred and was gone.

“Lark!” Oliver said, rushing forward. She lay like a broken bird in the path. “Dear God, Lark! Are you hurt—” He broke off.

It struck just then. The dark, silent enemy that had stalked Oliver all his life. The tightening of his chest muscles. The absolute impossibility of emptying his lungs. The utter certainty that this was the attack that would kill him.

The physicians called it asthma. Aye, they had a name for it, but no cure.

The world seemed to catch fire at the edges, a familiar warning sign. He saw Lark climb to her feet. Kit seemed to tilt as if he bent to pick something up. Lark moved her mouth, but Oliver could not hear her over the thunder of blood rushing in his ears.

God, not now. But he felt himself stagger.

“Ahhhh.” The thin sound escaped him. Shamed to the very toes of his Cordovan riding boots, Oliver de Lacey staggered back and fell, arms wheeling, fingers grasping at empty air.

“I’ve never stayed at an inn before,” Lark confessed to Kit as she cut a strip of bandage.

Oliver leaned against the scrubbed pine table in the large kitchen and tried to appear nonchalant, when in fact he was doing his best to keep from sliding into a heap on the floor.

What was it about Lark, he wondered, that so arrested the eye and took hold of the heart?

Perhaps it was the childlike sense of wonder with which she regarded the world. Or perhaps her complete lack of vanity, as if she were not even aware of herself as a woman. Or maybe, just maybe, it was her sweet nature, which made him want to hold her in his arms and taste her lips, to be the object of her earnest devotion.

“Oliver and I know every inn and ivybush ’twixt London and Wiltshire,” Kit was saying. Discreetly he sidled over to the table beside Oliver.

To catch me if I fall, Oliver thought, feeling both gratitude and resentment. Cursed with his baffling illness, he had lived a peculiar and isolated boyhood. When he had finally emerged from his shell of seclusion, Kit had been there with his brotherly advice, his ready sword arm and a fierce protective instinct that surfaced even now, when Oliver had grown a handspan taller than his friend.

Kit held out his hand and clenched his teeth as Lark washed the grit from his wound. She worked neatly, her movements deft as she applied the bandage. Oliver noticed that her nails were chewed, and he liked that about her, for it was evidence that she suffered unease like anyone else.

She wasted no missish sympathy on Kit but confronted his injury with matter-of-fact compassion and an unexpected hint of humor. “Try to avoid battles for a few days, Kit. You should give this gash a chance to heal.”

“I wonder what the devil those bast—er, rude scoundrels were after,” Kit said. “They didn’t even attempt to rob us.”

“Perhaps they were planning to kill us first.” Oliver had become rather casual about his brushes with death. Long ago he had decided to defy fortune. He refused to let the weakness of his lungs conquer him. He meant to die his own way. Thus far, the pursuit had been amusing.