Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,57

manhood, he demanded, “Show me You are more than a tool of men like Turold…Odo…William. Show me, else let the thread snap and rid me of the vestiges of hope so I may better bear the weight of what needs to be done to relieve England of men like Daryl and De Warenne.”

The falls continuing to mask the sight and sound of him, minutes passing, still the Lord did naught to prove worthy of praise and prayer. But how could He after what He allowed to befall Zedekiah?

Chest straining again, Vitalis shook his head to keep his friend from once more gripping his mind, knowing it would further delay his return to Nicola who would miss him soon if she did not already. But as he dragged on the beast’s leash to return it to its cage, a shadow appeared at the veil’s edge.

He was certain it was her. Still, just as he was remiss in not drawing his dagger nor retrieving the sword removed when he entered here, so he was in allowing this warrior to be found like this. Though inwardly he recoiled when she stepped behind the veil, he remained unmoving.

He did not hear her catch her breath when she adjusted to the dim, allowing her to make sense of him, but he knew she did. Disbelief in her wide eyes and the parting of her lips, she hesitated, but rather than retreat, she firmed her jaw and tested a foot forward over the wet floor.

“Leave me!” he barked, as much for her trespass as this shuddering and the moistening of his face whose heat and strain evidenced angry tears.

She continued forward.

“Leave, Nicola, else I will not be responsible for—”

“You will not harm me. I know you will not.” A moment later, the woman who had quietly cried at his back as they negotiated the wood and emptied a belly sickened by tale of Zedekiah’s desecration, halted and slowly raised a hand as if toward a dog so mad with pain he might rip open her throat.

Though Vitalis was tempted to knock her hand aside, he dropped his chin so he not be made to look upon pity and revulsion at seeing him unmanned. But then her hand was atop his head, her touch light. It lingered before sliding down over his ear.

“Vitalis,” she whispered, then lowered to her knees and drew her fingers across his bearded jaw and under his chin.

The pressure to raise his face was so slight, easily he could have resisted, but he did not. When he looked up, he saw neither pity nor revulsion on her face, though it was what he wanted, certain it would move him to anger sufficient to overwhelm this weakness and send her away. Instead, understanding and ache were in her lovely green eyes.

Vitalis did not know the man who yielded to Nicola D’Argent, who further weakened him by spilling more pressure from his chest and head, but the warrior who did not behave a warrior closed his eyes, dropped his chin, and became a boy again.

Chapter Fourteen

Nicola longed to be of comfort, but she had not expected Vitalis to allow it, just as she had not expected to find him kneeling behind the falls, bloodied hand cradled against his chest, face flushed and moist, the veins in his forehead bulging.

Though she had declared he would not harm her, she had not been entirely certain. And now she dared again, slipping a hand around the back of his neck, leaning in, and urging his head onto her shoulder.

He stiffened but did not push her away, and when she put an arm around him to draw him nearer, she felt his breath release. Then his brow was in the curve of her neck, the moisture on his face seeping through her gown at her collarbone, his beard pricking the flesh above her breasts. She continued to feel his struggle against further betrayal of his emotions, but just as she had lost that battle earlier, so did he.

Vitalis shuddered, convulsed, and in her presence yielded to mourning Zedekiah and injustice that seemed to know no pity nor end. Tighter and tighter she held him, arms quaking, cheek pressed to his upper back, once more spilling tears for his lost friend but also this warrior who was so pained he did not reject her. And praying. How she prayed!

In desperate whispers, she beseeched the Lord to so greatly make His presence felt that it comforted Vitalis beyond what she could