Page 9 of A Knight’s Reward

“Go,” he said gruffly.

“I... Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Anne.”

Spinning on her heel, her hair tangling about her shoulders, she hurried away.

Her footsteps faded to silence. Flexing their hands, the baker and his assistant grinned. The stable’s shadows seemed to darken with menace as the men stepped toward Dominic.

Anticipation of battle, as familiar to him as his own name, surged to life in his blood. In the east, he had fought and killed more men than he could remember. ’Twould be a shame to harm these two villagers who were riled over a misunderstanding—one, regrettably, he couldn’t clarify due to his mission for Geoffrey.

With a lopsided grin, he made one last attempt to reach them. “Come now. Surely we can settle our disagreement like grown men. Shall we head to the tavern for a few pints of ale?”

The baker spat in the straw. He drew back his arm, then launched his fist toward Dominic’s face.

Gisela unlocked the door of her tailor’s shop, located on the ground floor of a two-story townhouse. When she stepped inside, the scent of cooking pottage greeted her. Her belly rumbled. With a sigh, she felt some of the tension slide from her shoulders.

Some, but not all.

Muffled voices reached her through the stout wall separating her shop and one-room home. She recognized the brusque but affectionate inflections of the middle-aged widow—the town midwife—who’d become a close friend and often watched over Ewan. Gisela also discerned her little boy’s excited ramblings. After locking and bolting the entrance door behind her, the bread loaf under her arm, Gisela stood for a moment in the shop’s shadowed silence, simply listening to the swell and lull of sound.

Hanging on a wooden peg on the opposite wall, she discerned the form of a woolen gown she’d pinned together yester eve, a commission for the blacksmith’s wife. On the long table underneath glinted the earthenware bowl in which she kept spare pins. Although she couldn’t make them out in the darkness, she knew her cutting shears were there, too, along with bolts of cloth, spools of thread, and a wooden rule.

Like the sounds of conversation inside her home, the tailoring tools were familiar, an integral part of her daily routine. They should have brought her a measure of comfort. Yet, the disquiet growing inside her didn’t abate.

Images of Dominic—the bold, controlled warrior cloaked in shadows—crowded into her mind to blend with her memories of him as a younger, tormented man. On her journey home, she’d pondered whether she’d made the right decision to leave the stable, for her shattered soul yearned to trust him, as he had asked.

After the hellish past four months, would it be so wrong to trust at least him?

Running away was the safest choice. It allowed her to take refuge behind the emotional tower she’d raised around her heart in order to survive. It meant she never had to see Dominic again, if she didn’t wish to.

But, she did.

How desperately she missed him, craved the sound of his voice, yearned to be in his arms and know all that had happened to him since they had parted.

That same, lonely part of her insisted she was a fool not to trust him. After the powerful love they had forged together—proof of which was with her every day—he was the least likely person to betray her to Ryle.

Her mind spun with the weight of her thoughts. Worry plagued her, too, tightening her stomach into a painful knot, for she could not help but wonder what was happening to Dominic.

’Tis all right, he had assured her, before she fled. Was he truly all right?

The baker and blacksmith’s assistant were furious with his deceptions, no doubt due to the recent thefts in Clovebury, committed, some claimed, by vagrants. Others blamed the rich merchants, such as Frenchman Varden Crenardieu, who wanted his own share of England; by encouraging his thugs to undermine the local traders, he took more and more control of the town.

A few sennights ago, the potter’s shop was broken into, his clays ruined and his crockery smashed. The potter, a good friend of the baker’s, had raged ’twould cost him a month’s wages for the repairs. A good reason, mayhap, for the baker to be suspicious of a peddler who was more than he initially seemed.

However, the men’s manner had been extremely threatening.

A shrill cry, followed by laughter, echoed from inside Gisela’s house—a reminder Ewan awaited, and of the bread she’d bought for his dinner. Struggling to harness her unsettling thoughts, she crossed to the sewing table and set down the loaf. Keeping her hand closed so she didn’t drop the necklace Dominic had given her—which she’d not yet had a moment to look at—she shrugged out of her cloak. She hung it on the peg outside the door that opened into her house.

Her hand lingered on the iron doorknob. What if the men had harmed Dominic?

What if he lay unconscious on the stable floor, bruised and bleeding?

Gisela forced herself to exhale a calming breath as she retrieved the loaf. Angry as he might be, the baker, in all her dealings with him, seemed a fair man. Above all, Dominic was a battle-hardened fighter. A warrior who had survived crusade and achieved knighthood was more than capable of defending himself.

She depressed the door handle. The panel swung inward, and she stepped into her home lit by candlelight and a fire in the opposite wall’s stone hearth. The hearth, with its chimney disappearing into the unused floor above, was a rare feature for a commoner’s home, which usually had a stone-ringed fire pit; it had convinced her to pay the extra rent, for with the fire venting outside, her fabrics would not smell of smoke.

Moreover, the entry to the upper story had been sealed off and the stairs removed by a previous owner, so she didn’t have to worry about Ewan running up or falling down the steps.