Lady Thief - By Rizzo Rosko Page 0,91

huffed as though affronted. "I am Elizabeth!"

Blaise forced his eyelids open, a difficult task since they felt as though they were being weighed down by rocks. When they finally obeyed his commands, Blaise shut them tightly again with the sharp stabs that assaulted his eyes.

He hissed and rubbed his fists to his eyes. Those same feminine hands wrapped around his wrists and tried to force him to pull away but he held firm.

Whether he could see or not did not matter. His senses returned and the awareness that he was in a foreign place with an unknown woman filled his body with sharp displeasure.

He wished to see more of where he was, but pain, tears, and blurred images greeted him when he opened his lids.

"What did you put in my eyes, witch?" He growled, rubbing harder and hating his blindness.

The hands yanked themselves away. "Witch! I put nothing in your eyes! 'Tis only dirt."

He did not believe her. He had dirt in his eyes plenty of times before and not once had he ever been in such pain. "'Tis more than dirt. Only boulders could do this."

He tried to rub out the offending things, or at least move them to an area of his eyes where they did not cause him such discomfort. He needed to open them again and see where he was, be aware of his surroundings so that he might make an escape.

The female voice softened. "Aye, 'tis true. I would not be shocked if there were some rocks in there scratching at the whites of your eyes. 'Tis actually mud from the road where I found you."

Blaise halted the rubbing of his eyes but his hands remained in place. The road where she found him?

Aye, that was correct. He was riding, heading back to Graystone castle because of the rain when he was stopped by a portly man in the middle of the road.

His memory could conjure no solid image, but he did recall how the man humbly begged Blaise for coins to feed his starving family.

Sympathetic and eager to be out of the wet weather, Blaise reached for his pouch. He was promptly grabbed from behind and dragged from his horse, held down by what could only be a giant with the strength that overpowered him, and beaten over the head before all turned black on him.

Beneath the damp blanket, for the first time Blaise became aware that he was naked. He clenched his fists harder over his useless eyes.

The thieves took everything then. He could hardly believe his luck that they hadn't taken his life as well, though it would only serve him right for allowing himself to be fooled.

He swore to himself to never trust another individual outside of his family after Robert's betrayal. Now, because he so much as trusted that a beggar might truly be in need of sustenance, he found himself blind and helpless.

He clenched his fists in the straw. Relying on a peasant woman for aid. ‘Twas humiliating.

“Is the pain so horrible for you to scowl so?”

The voice was soft, indicating that he was not being made a joke of. He still ignored the question. "Was there nothing left of mine scattered in the road? My sword, or horse?" He asked.

"Nay, only yourself. You are fortunate that I came when I did as you would have drowned had I not been travelling down that road."

Blaise sputtered at her strange lie. "Drowned? There are no streams near that road."

"Nay, but the rain does create small streams and lakes of its own, and you were laying face down in one of those growing puddles."

Her plainly spoken statement silenced him. He could hardly think at all. So the thieves left him for dead. He supposed he should feel grateful that they left him for dead rather than seeing to the job themselves, otherwise he would not have been rescued by the woman sitting with him.

He had no eyes so he relied on his ears to tell him that Elizabeth picked herself up from where she sat next to him, went to the other side of the chamber, and Blaise heard a liquid being poured from a pitcher before she returned and sat next to him.

"Remove your hands. I'll wash it out. 'Tis clean water."

Blaise kept his hands over his eyes for one second longer, knowing that without the pressure from his fists the stabbing would return. But the offending rocks had to be taken out or else he would suffer with them