LITMIR.BIZ

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      The clouds thickened and obscured the moonlight, and night intensified around Hugh. Deep in shadow, he sat still, preoccupied with his ruminations, hardly aware of the gathering storm or anything else going on around him.

      When Siân inadvertently tripped over Hugh’s feet, it was only because of his quick reflexes that she did not drop the babe she carried and fall on her face.

      “Och!” she cried as the infant took up howling again. “I am sorry, my lord! I did not see you there in the dark.” She felt like a fool. Always awkward, forever clumsy—especially around Alldale. He must think her an absolute dolt. As did Owen. As did everyone she met.

      “It is nothing, Siân,” he said darkly, holding her arms to steady her, “do not fret so.”

      “You are kind, my lo—” But before Siân completed her thought, the infant belched loudly and spit a goodly amount of mother’s milk onto the shoulder of her bodice and down one sleeve. Siân wanted to crawl into a cave and hide.

      Hugh’s brows rose.

      Siân stifled a groan. Truly he did think her an idiot, and with good reason. She had plenty of experience with babies, yet she had wandered away unprepared, without so much as a cloth to clean the babe if necessary.

      Siân shook her head in dismay just as fat droplets of rain began to shower them. Hugh quickly pulled her and the child into the shelter of the nearby turret and watched as the clouds opened up. There was soon a curtain of rain all around them, with ominous rumbles of thunder and shimmering bolts of lightning in the distance. The infant settled down, and drowsed on Siân’s shoulder.

      Siân looked around the dark and empty turret. She knew she should not be alone with the earl, for there were proprieties to observe, her innocence to preserve. She was pledged to St. Ann’s, but looking at him now…the breadth of his chest, the strength of his hands, the power in his thighs…Siân suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill in the air, and everything to do with the way he’d touched her the night before, how he’d stood up for her to Owen, and kissed her hand.

      “Perhaps, genethig,” Siân said to the babe, turning her attention from the kind and competent man standing next to her, “it was not a new tooth at all, but rather a sour stomach that caused your troubles.”

      Hugh Dryden wreaked havoc on her equilibrium. Working to regain her composure, she spoke softly to the babe in Welsh. Siân knew she looked awful, as Owen had told her so not long ago, and now she smelled like sour milk, too. Very impressive.

      “I—I had no time to change…” she offered lamely. She knew she must look like a troll.

      “Clearly, there was further need of your skills amongst the villagers,” Hugh said offhandedly as he peered out the narrow window of the turret.

      This Saxon earl cut an imposing figure, Siân thought wistfully. Wearing a light tunic and dark chausses, he stood tall and quiet in the faint light of the turret. He truly was the hero of Clairmont, Siân thought, just as the people were saying.

      Lightning flashed again, and thunder rumbled in the distance, giving Siân a new reason to be uneasy. Her brow creased in concern. “Will we be safe up here?”

      Hugh nodded in reply, and Siân realized that she could see him better now. The low rumbles and faraway flashes of light had become almost constant; their faces were illuminated often, as if by an unearthly, flickering fire. She tried to make herself relax, but the fierceness of the storm was beginning to frighten her.

      “The worst of it is still in the distance,” he said.

      “Will it get worse here?” Siân asked, gazing worriedly through the narrow window at the driving rain outside. Violent storms always frightened her, and this one seemed to carry the wrath of God with it. “Lightning? Floods?”

      “Could be,” Hugh said absently. “But it could blow over. Or change direction.”

      Siân was not reassured. She shivered suddenly, violently, and backed away from the open window, holding the infant more closely. “We should go down,” she said.

      “Not yet,” Hugh replied, just now realizing Siân’s fear. “This will let up in a few minutes, then I’ll escort you down,” he said to reassure her.

      Siân glanced out the doorway, and Hugh could see that the fool woman was considering whether to make a run for it through the rain to get to lower ground. Haste would likely make her slip on the wet stone and injure herself, perhaps even drop the child. He could not let her go.

      “Lady Siân,” he said, attempting to mask his exasperation, “the storm is in the distant hills. You need not be concerned for your safety.”

      Siân wasn’t so sure. Lightning had struck the church tower in Pwll many years before, and that was a memory she would never lose. She did not care to be high up in the castle turret when the worst of this storm struck, although a run through the cold rain was not appealing, either. She knew the earl was right—that there was time before the storm worsened—but still, it was difficult to remain calm.

      Stiffening her backbone, Siân strove to rein in her anxiety. She was a grown woman, not some child to be ruled by her fears. “I’ve seen storms,” she said, “that—Och!”

      A fierce arc of lightning lit up the near sky, then instantly a bone-rattling thunderclap sounded. Siân jumped. At the same time, Hugh turned to reassure her, but somehow drew her into his arms, surprising them both, and waking the babe Siân held. The wound in Hugh’s upper arm began to bleed, which Siân noticed as they broke apart.

      Over the infant’s crying, Siân exclaimed, “You’re hurt!”

      “’Tis naught,” he replied. “I’ll tend it when we go down.”

      “But it’s bleeding badly,” she told him. Hugh’s need momentarily surpassed Siân’s fear. She looked around to see if there was a cloth to be used to stanch the flow of blood, but there was nothing. Her mind off the storm for the moment, Siân went to the doorway and looked for a guard.

      They must all have taken cover from the rain.

      “Here,” she said, handing the infant to him to hold with his unhurt arm. “Take her for a moment.”

      Hugh felt an instant of shock when she shoved the child at him. He held the babe awkwardly with his uninjured arm, and watched as Siân turned around, then bent over and pulled up the hem of the ugly, dark over-kirtle she wore, to expose the fine, white linen gown underneath. A smooth, elegant length of leg was exposed, as well, and Hugh’s mouth went dry as he turned quickly away from her inadvertent display.

      He heard the tearing of cloth, then suddenly she was there, taking the babe from him, pressing the clean linen to the wound near his shoulder, stanching the flow of blood.

      “You should have this attended to, my lord,” Siân admonished severely. She could not see the wound through his light tunic, but by the volume of blood staining the cloth, she knew it was long and deep. “You might well lose your arm with a wound this severe.”

      “And what would you know of lost limbs?” Hugh answered with derision.

      Siân froze. His tone of voice had changed. Now he sounded just like all the other haughty Saxons she’d recently met. For all she knew, he could have been one of the Saxon soldiers who’d repeatedly harassed Pwll and the other Welsh border villages in retribution after the Glendower revolt. She should have known better than to allow herself any warm feelings for a Saxon aristocrat.

      They were all the same.

      What did she know of lost limbs, this earl wanted to know? Siân didn’t care to recount the terrible price of those bloody raids on her people—the lost lives, as well as lost limbs. Nor did she want to recall the atrocities committed by some of the Saxon pigs, when their victories had already been secured.

      With lips pressed tightly together, Siân plopped the makeshift bandage into Hugh’s free

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