LITMIR.BIZ

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Keelin turned back to the Englishman, the arrow was out. The boy’s back was bleeding freely as Keelin stood beside the lord and placed a white cloth onto the wound. She applied pressure. The child moaned.

      “Adam…” the lord said shakily.

      Keelin could feel the heat and strength of the man next to her. She looked up at his strong profile—the long, straight nose, his square jaw, and unwavering sky-blue eye—and wondered if there was a man in all Ireland who would give her the care and attention that this man gave to the young boy at hand.

      Certainly there was, she reminded herself. The man to whom she was betrothed would care for her as none had ever done before. Eocaidh would have seen to it. Many a time had Keelin asked Tiarnan about her betrothed, but her uncle had always skirted the question, never quite answering her. Keelin had finally given up asking, for ’twas entirely possible he did not know. The council of elders had the final word, and they might not have included Tiarnan in their decision.

      “’Tis a good sign, m’lord,” Keelin said in a quiet voice. “His groanin’.”

      He looked at her then, noticing her for the first time. He blushed deeply and his eyes darted away.

      “E-Edward,” the golden English lord said to the knight who stood near the door, intentionally turning his attention from her. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “See if there is a physician in the v-village down the road and fetch him if—”

      “I am a healer, m’lord,” Keelin said, spreading her leather satchels on the bed next to the boy. “And I have all I need to tend the poor wee lad.” She opened the pouches, pouring some dark powder into a small dish, then adding water. She mixed the two into a paste and then bid the English lord to lift the bandage from the boy’s back.

      “Ach, ’tis a grievous wound,” she said as she spread some of the paste into the deep gash, “made ever more dangerous by its proximity to the spine.”

      She didn’t tell him that the kidney was nearby as well, and that she hoped it hadn’t been nicked by the arrow. As it was, the boy would be lucky not to bleed to death slowly, from the inside.

      Marcus could only stare at her graceful hands as they worked. In a few short moments, his life had been tossed upside down, his father killed dead in the field and poor Adam gravely wounded and lying in a peasant’s hut that was inhabited by an old man and a beautiful woman who was obviously no common peasant.

      Nor was she English.

      Her presence here made no sense. It occurred to Marcus that she might be connected somehow to the vicious warriors who had attacked them in the wood. Were those men her personal army? Was that why they had attacked? To keep her safe?

      He thought it odd, too, that she had not seemed surprised by his arrival with Adam and the others. Was this kind of occurrence commonplace in her experience?

      No, he realized. It could not be. They were not so very far from Wrexton now, and Marcus was sure he’d have heard of a band of wild, foreign warriors guarding one small cottage.

      But who was she?

      The woman wore a simple, but finely made kirtle of wool dyed deep green, and her dark hair lay long and silky upon her back. She moved majestically, with grace and purpose, as she laid gentle, competent hands on his young cousin. She spoke softly to Adam, with her strangely musical accent, even though it was unclear whether or not the boy could hear.

      She had the mien of a queen, yet here she was, in this place—this small cottage that was little better than a peasant’s hovel. And Marcus felt as tongue-tied and awkward as he’d ever felt in the presence of a lady.

      “M’lord,” said the grizzled old man on the bed at the opposite end of the room.

      Marcus turned and walked toward him, noticing that the old fellow still beckoned. It was then that he realized the man was blind.

      “Ye must allow my niece to do what she thinks is best,” he said, his words accented even more thickly than the woman’s, “for you could ask for no greater healer on English or Irish soil than Keelin O’Shea.”

      “Is that who she is? Your niece?” Marcus asked, much more at ease now that he was not standing quite so close to the girl. He let out a slow breath as he watched her continue to stitch the wound in Adam’s back.

      “Aye, Keelin O’Shea of Kerry, she is,” the old man said. “And me, I’m her uncle. Tiarnan O’Shea at yer service. Or I will be, once I’m up on m’ feet again.”

      “Kerry…That would be…an Irish province?” Marcus asked, barely listening to the reply. He raked his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. He was painfully aware that somewhere outside his father lay still in death, his body covered by a shroud and under the guardianship of his men.

      Marcus was numb with grief and anger, and did not know how he would function, how he would assume the role of earl, and command these men. How would he get his father and the rest of his fallen knights back to Wrexton and into hallowed ground? And what of Adam? ’Twas obvious the boy could not travel, nor could Marcus leave him here with strangers.

      “Kerry’s more a region, lad,” Tiarnan replied, oblivious to the young lord’s consternation. “A fierce and proud land of Munster in the southwest of Ireland, wi’ loughs and craggy hills galore.”

      Marcus made no reply, for he was lost in thought. The old man took his silence for worry about Keelin and her handling of the wounded boy. “Truly, ye can trust her, lad,” Tiarnan said. “She’s got a gift for the healin’.”

      “I can only pray you’re right,” Marcus said as he turned away and stalked out of the cottage. Roger and Edward remained within, and Marcus knew he could trust either man to come to him if further trouble arose.

      He looked up at the sky and breathed deeply, wondering how such a beautiful day could have been destroyed so quickly, by such ugliness.

      ’Twas years since Marcus had engaged in battle. Five years, to be precise, since he’d returned home from the French wars to find his mother ill and dying. After her death, he’d stayed on at Wrexton with his father, never returning to France.

      Wrexton was at war with no one. The campaign in France had little bearing on what happened here, so far in the west country. There were no border disputes or skirmishes with neighboring knights to account for any violence. He and Eldred had developed good rapport with the Welsh who lived on the land adjacent to Wrexton, and Marcus had had no reason to expect a vicious ambush from foreign knights.

      Knights? If that’s what they were.

      Not even the French were so barbaric. What armor these men wore was primitive. They were unwashed and unshaven, with hair pulled into thongs and hanging down the length of their backs. Their language was strange and guttural, and completely unfamiliar to him. He’d thought them Celts before, and now, knowing that the cottage woman and her uncle were Irish, he wondered what the connection was. There had to be one.

      And God help Tiarnan O’Shea and his niece if they were in any way a party to the day’s hideous slaughter.

      Marcus walked around to the far side of the cottage where the men had set up tents. It was there they would spend the night, where the wounded men would be tended. He did not know how many nights they would stay, or when it would be possible for Adam to travel to Wrexton Castle.

      But he would have to get his father home soon, for burial on Wrexton land.

      There was a briskly flowing brook near the cottage, and Marcus walked down a beaten path to get to it. He pulled off his tunic and crouched down, dunking his head in the water. Somehow, he had to clear his thoughts.

      Keelin finished tending the lad, then put away her medicines and bandages. She washed her hands in a basin of fresh water, then went over to speak quietly to her uncle.

      “Sleep awhile now,” she told him, knowing that the worry and then the excitement of visitors had exhausted him. “I must go

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