Noble Hearts 03 - The Courageous Heart (6 page)

She
swallowed, un
ready to face those eyes and everything that hid behind them.
She spun back to Rebecca.
“Will she be alright?”

“That she will. All she needs is rest and a little care,” Rebecca answered in a matronly voice, mixing herbs in a cup on the small bedside table. She added a bit of water to the cup then turned to hold it to Madeline’s lips.

Madeline stirred, her eyes fluttering open. “Jack?” she muttered, too weak to move.

“Easy, easy,
ketzele
.” Rebecca held her up and coxed her to drink. “Rebecca is here now. You’ll be right as rain in no time. Just rest easy.”

Madeline turned away from the cup, delirious. “Where’s J
ack?”

“Ssh, ssh, love. Drink this first and we’ll find your Jack for you.”

Madeline
moaned
but let Rebecca feed her the herb concoction.

Rebecca turned to Ethan. “And you, young man, need to go downstairs and think long and hard about how you’re going to explain this to me and David.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ethan nodded to Rebecca as if she were the Queen Moth
er and backed out of the room.

Joanna balanced on the balls of her feet
, glancing between the door and the bed
. The draw to follow Ethan
to find out what in God’s name was going on
was as powerful as the need to stay and look after Madeline.
Madeline was her duty, but Ethan … Ethan was some
thing she never could explain.

She shuffled Meg in her arms and smoothed a hand over Wulfric’s head. Rebecca wiped Madeline’s forehead and felt her neck and shoulders. All Joanna could do was watch. Her back bristled in panic.

“It’s alright,
dearie
,” Rebecca told her with a kind smile. “
I can see your feet itching.
You can go after him. The lady is safe with me.”

Joanna mumbled a quick, “Thank you,” and rushed out to the hall, taking the children with her.

The sounds and smells of the London inn pressed around her, awkward and unfamiliar. She found her way downstairs and into the bustling kitchen. The maid Ethan had spoken to earlier eyed Joanna suspiciously when she stumbled to a stop in the doorway.

“Can I get you something, miss?”

Joanna took in the cramped, steaming kitc
hen and shook her head. “No.”

The maid, Bess, went back to her work. The prickling down Joanna’s back grew hotter. London was always going to be an adventure, but standing in a strange room surrounded by people she didn’t know while her master and mistress were locked away in
a
Tower
decorated with the heads of people just like them
was not what she had in mind. She swallowed, tamping down the panic that clamored against her ribs.

“Where did Ethan go?” She winced as the words left her lips.
She hadn’t thought she
would
ever wanted to see him again, but he was the only person she knew in the giant city of strangers.

“Who, Dunkirke?” Bess asked. Joanna clamped her jaw and nodded. “Outside.”

Sucking in a breath, Joanna marched across the room, dragging Wulfric with her. He whimpered in complaint.

“Miss,” Bess stopped her, “Want me to take the boy?”

“Yes please,” Joanna sighed in relief. She let go of Wulfric’s hand as Bess crouched to smile at him. To his credit, Wulfric let her brush out the kitchen door into the back garden without putting up a fuss.

Joanna didn’t have to search far to find Ethan. He stood beside a large
wagon
, helping a scrawny young man unload it.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Ethan jerked his head up but took his time replying.
The sight of him laboring like a common drudge went against everything Joanna had ever known about the man and his pride. It only fed her urgent sense of wrongness.

When he had carried a fat sack of grain to the wall beside the kitchen door he answered, “I live here.”

Joanna looked around. The inn’s courtyard and garden were sheltered from the street but neighboring buildings peeked over the high stone walls as if listening to their c
onversation. “Where is here?”

“The Stag Hunt inn.”

His answer didn’t help at all. Joanna shifted Meg once again to hold her against her shoulder. Ethan continued to unload the wagon. The young man he worked with sent her curious stare after curious stare, his blue eyes wide, until one sharp glare from Ethan put his eyes back on his work. Ethan brought a heavy cask to the garden wall. Instead of returning to the
wagon
he rubbed a hand over his face, half of it beard, and let out a breath.

“You look good, Joanna,” he mumbled, shifting towards her as though it was the last thing he wanted to do. His eyes
took their time
meet
ing
hers.

“You don’t, Ethan,” sh
e snapped in reply. Her breath
came in shallow gasps all the same. She wasn’t ready for this. Two and a half years was not enough time to dull the pain
of all that Ethan represented to her
.
Especially not when everything else had just gone to hell.
Meg fussed and she was grateful to have something else to focus on.

“I assume that’s Jack and Madeline’s baby,” Ethan ventured. He took a few steps closer to her, craning his neck to get a look.

“She is.” Joanna stepped away from him towards the garden wall. She told herself that her stomach was tied in knots of worry over Aubrey and Crispin and Jack, that her heart pounded because she’d r
un all the way from the Tower.

“There’s no mistaking that ginger hair.” Ethan followed her, making small talk. “When was she born?”

“Before Christmas,” Joanna answered. “It was a difficult birth. We were all on pins and needles for days, praying for Madeline to pull through.
The midwife said she wouldn’t survive, but she did.
You should have seen Jack when-” She stopped herself and frowned. Ethan had no right to the fears and triumphs they’d all gone through, none at all.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he mumbled, lowering his head. “I’ve always been fond of Madeline.”

Joanna huffed an ironic laugh and turned away from him as she sat on the edge of the wall.

“So, I guess life
in Derbyshire
went on without me?” he asked.

She glared at him over her shoulder,
anger and longing
mounting higher at the deeper question in his eyes. “Yes, Ethan, life went on without you. Just like it
did five years ago when
you
-
” She whipped her head back to stare into the neatly-kept herb garden and the well in the middle of it.
She would not open that gaping wound now.

“Oh.” He actually had the nerve to sound disappointed. “You found someone then I guess.”

She twisted towards him, jaw dropping
. “
Aubrey, Crispin, and Jack have just been arrested and locked up
and risk having their heads put on spikes on the Tower
, Madeline is on death’s door,
and
that’s
all you can think about? Who may or may not be warming my bed?”

“That’s not what I-”

“I’ll have you know that I got over
that
kind of foolishness years ago.” Ethan
lowered his head
. “I have far better things to do with my time
than worry about bedfellows
. Aubrey and Crispin depend on me. They’ve given me responsibility in Derby and at Windale.” Ethan’s eyes flickered up at the mention of home. “
They need my help! Their lives are at stake! And you want to know about my love life?
”

“No, I never should have-”

“No you shouldn’t!”

She stood so fast that the corner of her kirtle caught on a rough patch of wall. The seam ripped at the pocket. The bundle of Toby’s letters that she carried with her at all times tumbled onto the grass. Ethan reach
ed
for it.

“Don’t touch that!” Joanna shouted. Meg burst into wails. Joanna was forced to bounce and pat her in an attempt to keep her calm. She
was anything but calm herself.

Ethan ignored her order and touched the sacred letters anyhow. He had the nerve to look at the writing on the topmost letter. His sheepish expression tumbled into flat-out misery.

“This is Toby’s handwriting,” he said, voice a ghostly whisper.

She freed a hand and snatched the bundle away from him. “I’ll thank you to keep yourself to yourself
!
”

His gaping mouth snapped shut and his grief flashed to bitterness. “He was my friend,” he told her in a harsh whisper.

“He was my brother.” The ache in her chest was more than she could bear.
“And it’s your fault he’s dead!
”

Ethan flinched as if she’d struck him.
Guilt hung off of every part of him. A ghost of pity threaded around Joanna’s heart, but she fought it off. She
would not feel sorry for him.

Ethan
turned to go but only made it a few steps.

“Ah, Dunkirke!” The jovial man Ethan had introduced as David strode towards them from the stable, arms wide and welcoming. “I see everything is settled.” Joanna fought to hold her tongue. Things were as far from settled as they could possibly be. “And now I would like to be properly introduced to your beautiful friend.”

“David, this is Joanna,” E
than managed, his voice rough.

Joanna’s heart squeezed so tightly she thought it would burst out of her chest. “Thank you for your hospitality, sir,” she clipped her greeting, adding a short curtsy and shifting Meg in her arms as an excuse not to meet his eyes.

“Any friend of Dunkirke’s is a friend of mine,” David smiled. His sharp eyes darted between her and Ethan. “How is your red-headed friend?”

Ethan cleared his throat. “Rebecca is seeing to her upstairs.”

“I see, I see. She’s in good hands then.” David paused. Neither Joanna nor Ethan filled in the silence. He arched an eyebrow. “Well, miss Joanna, you are welcome to stay at The Stag Hunt for as long as you’d like. Provided we have room, that is. These are busy times for innkeepers in London.”

“Thank you, sir, but we won’t be staying,” Joanna said.
“My master and mistress need me.”

“Where are you planning to go?” Ethan challenged her.
“You can’t go back to the Tower.”

How dare he tell her what to do at a time like this!
“
We’ll go anywhere
that you aren’t
.”

Her barb had an immediate effect.
“Madeline is ill.” Ethan crossed his arms
, misery
stirred
to anger
. “The others are imprisoned. Tower guards are looking for you. Just where do you think you’ll be safer than right here?”

“Don’t you dare
order me around like a servant
, Ethan Windale!” Joanna railed. David’s eyebrows rose.

“What does it matter?” Ethan barked in reply. “You never listened to a word I said anyhow!”

“I never listened because you never spoke a word of sense in your life!”

“You wouldn’t know sense if it rode up to you on a white horse with banners
flying
!”

“The only banner I’ve ever seen
flying
was that garish monstrosity
you force
d
Toby to carry when you left me!” Joanna choked on her words. “When you left Windale,” she corrected herself. Her heart burst in her chest, spreading shards of glass through her gut.

“Too bad you weren’t there to see the one I had with me when I came back!” Ethan battled on. “But you weren’t there when I came back
, were you?
You were scrubbing Crispin’s floors and tidying his shelves.”

“So you went running straight into the arms of another woman, didn’t you! And we all know how that worked out!”

“Aubrey was there for me!”

“And where were you when she needed you? You-”

“Children, children!” David raised his h
ands, ending the war of words.

Joanna and Ethan stood glaring at each other and panting. Joanna was hotter now than she had been running through the streets of London. Meg screamed in her arms with
all the anger Joanna felt.

“I think it would be best if Dunkirke helped Jacob finish storing our wares
,” David continued,
“
and if you, my dear, enjoyed a relaxing cup of ale at the complete opposite end of my property.”