“That was your first kiss?”

“Aye, and my last, I expect. Once I go back to St. Gabriel, the monks will keep me away from future visitors.”

“Go back! You would go back there to live in such isolation?”

“It’s all I’ve ever known,” Bridget said. “The monks are my family.”

“But you are a lovely young woman. You should be meeting young men who will court you and offer you a life and a family of your own. You should be having a real first kiss and many more.”

She smiled. “It was real enough.”

“Nay, it was not. A real kiss is not a fumbled gesture in the dark between strangers. It’s an expression two people use when their hearts are too full to express their love any other way.”

Her eyes misted. “’Tis something I’ll never have, then.”

He raised a finger and wiped a tear that had started down her cheek. “Aye, you will, angel,” he said. Then he lowered his lips to hers…

Praise for Ana Seymour’s recent titles

Lord of Lyonsbridge

“…wonderful characters…a highly enjoyable read.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

A Family for Carter Jones

“…a deliciously sweet tale of love.”

—Wichita Falls Times Record News

Jeb Hunter’s Bride

“…a brilliant historical romance.”

—Affaire de Coeur

Maid of Midnight

Harlequin Historical #540

#539 THE ELUSIVE BRIDE

Deborah Hale

#541 THE LAST BRIDE IN TEXAS

Judith Stacy

#542 PROTECTING JENNIE

Ann Collins

Maid of Midnight
Ana Seymour

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Available from Harlequin Historicals and ANA SEYMOUR

The Bandit’s Bride #116

Angel of the Lake #173

Brides for Sale #238

Moonrise #290

Frontier Bride #318

Gabriel’s Lady #337

Lucky Bride #350

Outlaw Wife #377

Jeb Hunter’s Bride #412

A Family for Carter Jones #433

Father for Keeps #458

†Lord of Lyonsbridge #472

The Rogue #499

†Lady of Lyonsbridge #520

†Maid of Midnight #540

For my sister, Barbara Jackowell, with much love and

thanks for all your encouragement, ideas, research…and

for setting me on the path to a medieval monastery!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

It felt good to be mounted on Thunder again after the rough Channel crossing. Ranulf grimaced as he remembered the endless swells and how close he had come to the indignity of losing the contents of his stomach.

This was better. He took a deep breath of crisp spring air. The Norman countryside was lushly green. A pretty brown thrush burst suddenly out of a gorse bush just ahead of him.

Ranulf smiled. His grandmother Ellen had always said that her Normandy homeland was the loveliest place on earth, outside of Lyonsbridge. He’d visited here once before, coming home from the Crusades, but he’d been traveling with an army in chaos after the capture of King Richard. There had been little time to admire the scenery.

There would be little time this trip, either, he thought, his smile fading. He was not here for pleasure. He’d come to find Dragon. And he didn’t intend to return to the warmth and comfort of Lyonsbridge until he could ride there with Dragon at his side.

He knew that the others counted his younger brother as dead. Two long years had passed without word. His grandmother had secretly ordered the holy brothers to begin masses for Edmund’s soul. But Ranulf refused to believe that his brother, a fighter so fierce he’d earned the name Dragon-slayer, was dead. He would find him, no matter how long it took. He’d search every corner of this bloody continent, even if it meant riding all the way to Jerusalem.

He intended to start with an obscure little abbey called St. Gabriel.

Bridget clucked her tongue in reproof as Brother Francis presented her yet another habit with the hem shredded like cabbage.

“If you all insist on continuing your tinkerings, we’ll not have a garment left to clothe you,” she said, shaking her head.

Francis’s round cheeks dimpled. “Now that would be a sight if the bishop ever did get around to visiting us here. A bunch of naked monks, being ordered about by a girl.”

Bridget forced her face into a frown, but her eyes danced. “Careful, Brother Francis, lest you have to do penance for such talk.” The frown turned genuine. “Who says I order you about?”

The plump little monk looked as if he wanted to put an arm around her shoulders, but he stopped himself and said instead, “Ah, child, let’s call it directing, not ordering. And well you know that half the brotherhood would perish without you to care for us.”

Bridget smiled. “I’ll admit to wondering at times how you all managed before I came along.”

“The Lord sent you to us. ’Tis the only answer. We’ve pondered it these many years since the day—”

Bridget waited, but she knew that Brother Francis would speak no further about her mysterious appearance at the abbey years ago. It had been her home as long as she could remember, but even now that she was a woman grown, the monks refused to speak of how she had gotten there.

She had stopped asking. It was enough that the monks loved her and she them. Though she’d devoured the abbey books on life outside the secluded monastery, she was happy here. She enjoyed her overflowing garden, the bustle of the dining hall and the peaceful solitude of the monk’s walk.

“If ’twas the Lord who sent me, it must be because he could see just how hard the White Monks of St. Gabriel were on their clothes,” she said, holding up the shredded hem and smiling at Francis.

“Sometimes I think we put too much on you, Bridget. How one slender girl can do all the work of caring for forty careless old men…”

“Forty dear souls,” Bridget corrected. “Who first took care of me for many years, don’t forget.”

Francis looked doubtful. “It seems a burdensome life for a young woman.”

Bridget gave the merry laugh that had so brightened the dark monastery halls and the lives of its inhabitants. “If it’s a burden, then ’tis one of love,” she said. “I’m fully content here.”

Francis’s worried expression smoothed. “If Brother Ebert tears his gown again, I’ll see that he sews it himself,” he promised. “He’s so proud of his confounded bread slicer and I don’t know how many times it’s run amok.” He turned to leave, muttering as he went, “I don’t know what was wrong with pulling apart the bread hunk by hunk like we’ve always done.”

Bridget smiled fondly at the round, retreating form. She’d told Francis the truth. She was content. It was true that sometimes, just before she drifted off to sleep, she’d have visions of a world beyond St. Gabriel. By morning the dreams would be gone.

She smoothed her fingers over the rough fabric of the torn habit and stared into the kitchen fire. She had no intention of looking for such a world. The only way she would glimpse it within these walls was if it would come to her.

Ranulf’s initial thought was that another bird had shot out of the brush, this time knocking off the small leather helmet he was wearing. He hadn’t brought his full armor to France. The wars were over and he had no desire for more fighting.

Almost immediately he realized that it had been no bird that had hit him, but an arrow. Before he could so much as reach for the sword in his saddle scabbard, they were on him. Four, at least, maybe more.

He flailed about with his arms, which were hard as an ironsmith’s hammer. Even before the years of the Crusade, the three Brand brothers had honed their strength in friendly competition, always eager to match their mettle against their siblings.

With the sheer force of his blows, Ranulf knocked two of his assailants from their horses, but another, a big man dressed in a black breastplate and black metal wristlets, took their place. Ranulf’s gloved fist hit the black metal, sending a shock all the way back up his arm. The man brushed Ranulf’s arm away as though it were a noisome fly, then he turned in the saddle and lifted the weapon he held in his right hand.

The last thing Ranulf remembered was the sight of a wicked star mace and an arm encased in black wristlets descending toward his head, blotting out the bright Normandy sun.

“Brother Alois says we can’t risk having you tend the man, Bridget.” Francis’s expression was worried.

“Nonsense. He’s been out of his head, raving, for nigh on two days. The Holy Father himself could be nursing him and he’d not know the difference.” Bridget finished stirring the mug of herbal tea at the edge of the hearth and rose to her feet. “Don’t worry, Francis, if he starts to come around, I’ll scurry back into the shadows like a little spider.”

Francis’s smile was sympathetic. “You know that if anyone outside learned of your presence here, you’d not be allowed to stay with us.”

“Aye, I’m well aware of it.”

Bridget scooted around the bulky monk, making sure not to spill the tea. It was one of the rare days when the brothers’ overprotective ways irritated her. She was sure her dissatisfaction had something to do with the young man who lay unconscious in the monks’ sleeping quarters. She’d caught a glimpse of him when Brother Ebert and Brother Alois had first brought him in the previous day. They’d found him on the road on their way back from market day in Beauville.

“I’ll go with you,” Francis said, giving a little puff as he lifted himself from the kitchen bench.

“You’ll not,” Bridget replied firmly. “I can’t tend the patient and my stew at the same time. Just sit there and give it a stir every now and then.”

Francis looked doubtfully from the young woman to the bubbling kettle and back. “You won’t…touch the man, will you?”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “’Twould be quite a feat to feed tea to a senseless man without touching him, don’t you think?”

“I should go with you.”

“You should mind the stew. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and if those carrots are scorched to the bottom of the pot, I’m sending you to dig me some new ones.”

With a little sigh of relief, she ducked out the low door of the wooden kitchen and walked across the yard to the low brick dormitory that housed the Cistercian monks of St. Gabriel. When she was a child, growing up within the walls of the abbey, this building had been forbidden to her, but the practicality of her efficient housekeeping and sense of order had long since overcome the monks’ scruples about allowing her access to their bedchambers.

Nowadays she had the run of the entire abbey, and used both smiles and a firm hand to keep it operating with the precision of the water timepiece Brother Ebert had invented. She rarely had problems, since the monks adored her, but some of them were a little…absentminded was the kind word, she decided. So she made it part of her routine to give gentle reminders when it was time to feed the animals, tend the vegetables, remove the week’s baking from the oven, pour the tallow into molds before it boiled entirely away….

She smiled as she walked inside the building into the largest sleeping room. Around the walls were sixteen beds, lined up perfectly and with covers folded and neatly stacked on top of each cot. Before she’d taken charge, the monks had never had individual beds. The neatness had taken some doing, but it had now become routine.

Remembering her mission, she walked quickly through the other two sleeping rooms to the far end of the building where two individual chambers held single cots reserved for brothers who were ill. Bridget had often tended to sick brothers in the past, though she knew that her charges were never entirely comfortable with her ministrations.

They’d placed the stranger in the rear chamber. A single candle flickered on the stand next to his bed and more light filtered in from the small window at the far end of the room. For a moment, she stood in the doorway, studying him.

There had not been a new novice to enter the order at St. Gabriel in Bridget’s lifetime, which meant that the youngest of the brothers who had raised her was old enough to be her father. When the odd visitor had entered the abbey walls, the monks had always bustled her away into hiding before she could be seen. This was the first time, Bridget realized, that she had ever been in the same room with someone young. The man lying so still on the cot in front of her looked to be not much older than she herself.

His head was swathed in bandages and his face was stark white where it was not streaked with crusted blood. His eyes were closed, and appeared sunken in his skull. All in all, he was a rather gruesome sight, she decided, but fascinating for all that.

Brother Ebert and Brother Alois had found the man stripped of anything that could possibly identify him. He’d been beaten and left for dead. Such things happened in the outside world, Bridget knew, which was just one more reason why she should be content with her tranquil life behind the walls.

The tea was growing cold in her hands. She walked over to the bed and placed the mug on the candle stand. The stranger lay so still that for a moment she wondered if he was breathing. Then her eyes moved to his chest and she saw an almost imperceptible rise and fall. He wore a thin under-tunic that was stiff with dried blood. The sight of it, along with his bloody and battered face, gave her a shiver. Before anything else, the man could stand a good cleaning.

With sudden resolve, she spun around and marched back out through the monks’ chambers, across the yard and into the kitchen. A dozing Francis bolted upright in his seat.

“I’ve stirred it well, lass,” he said, the words thick.

Bridget paid him little attention. “Pray continue to do so, Francis. The fate of tonight’s supper is in your hands.”

Then she took an iron pot lifter from the wall and retrieved a kettle from the back of the fire.

Francis leaned forward. “What are you doing?”

“I need hot water.”

“For more tea?”

“Nay. I mean to bathe the man.”

Francis’s jaw dropped. “Bathe him?”

“Aye. He’s filthy with blood and dirt. How can we tend his wounds if we can’t even see them?”

“’Tis an outrageous plan, Bridget. For one thing, a bathing could finish what the brigands started. And for another…why, child, you can’t seriously be thinking of…” He stopped and clasped his hands together under the long sleeves of his habit.

Bridget spoke briskly as she wrapped her skirt around the handle of the kettle and started out of the room. “Just forget that I ever told you about it, Francis. And mind the carrots,” she called over her shoulder.

She was still smiling when she reached the sickroom. She couldn’t remember ever seeing quite the same look of consternation on Brother Francis’s kind face. It was wicked of her to enjoy it, but she’d had so little chance to do anything out of the ordinary, much less shocking, in her life here. This was an adventure, even if it only meant cleaning up a stranger who, from the look of him, was destined for the tiny graveyard behind the chapel.

The room’s candle had burned out in a puddle of tallow, but the late afternoon sun slanted through the tiny window, providing plenty of light. After a moment of hesitation, Bridget set her shoulders and walked over to the cot. She put the kettle on the floor and sank to her knees beside it, bringing her face only inches away from the sleeping man.

This close, she could see the stubble of whiskers along his square jaw. She had a sudden urge to know what they felt like, and, realizing that there was nothing to prevent her from doing so, she reached out a gentle finger and stroked his chin. The harsh prickle surprised her. She pulled back as though burned, then touched him once again, more slowly.

His sunken eyes were rimmed with thick black lashes. Tendrils of hair escaping from his head dressing were black as well. What color were his eyes? she wondered.

Giving herself a little shake, she took one of the rags she’d brought along, soaked it in the hot water and began to wash him. The dried blood was two days old, and she had to rub to remove it. Her patient moaned and shifted restlessly on the cot, but did not awaken.

She removed his bandage to reveal an open, oozing gash along the side of his head. After supper she’d return with one of her herb poultices, but for the moment, she wrapped him back up in a new dressing. She finished washing his face, then his neck. Clean of the dirt and blood, his countenance was undeniably handsome, in spite of the pallor.

She reached the collar of his tunic and stopped, uncertain. It should come off, she decided. Now that his face was clean, the blood-soaked garment looked horrific. She threw the rag into the water and rose to her feet. The most sensible thing to do would be to leave the disrobing to the brothers. She had no doubt she was strong enough for the task—her days of hard work had made her stronger than many of the monks. But she had some doubt about the propriety of such an action.

She stood watching the patient for a long time, hesitating. He’d settled back into his deathlike stupor. In truth, she told herself, ’twas no different than cleaning up the bloody calf one of the milk cows had birthed last week. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the blanket from the inert man and threw it to the floor. Beneath the waist-length tunic, he wore woolen hose. Bridget gave a little gasp. She’d seen paintings in her books, but the only men she’d seen in person had been the monks, clad in their billowy robes. This man’s legs bulged with sinewy strength. Between his legs were bulges of another sort.

At the pit of her stomach was a curious stirring.

She should definitely call the monks, she thought, even as she began to lift the man and strip the bloody tunic from his back. His naked chest was as hard and powerful as his thighs. Bridget swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.

Without taking her eyes from the man’s body, she leaned over to rinse the bloody rag in the cooling water. She was staring, she knew, but who was there to see? Then, with an impish grin at her own boldness, she proceeded to give the mysterious stranger a thorough washing from chest to…toe.

Ranulf couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to cross the Channel. And why had they stuffed him into a barrel for the crossing so that he couldn’t look out at the sea and sky? He tried to lift a fist to pound on the lid and demand release, but, to his amazement, his arm wouldn’t move. Nothing would, for that matter.

Nothing was moving except the barrel, which made its regular up-and-down swoop with every new wave. Ranulf wanted to be sick, but even his stomach wouldn’t move. Nor his mouth. His eyes wouldn’t open, either. What had happened to him? he wondered in sudden panic.

The barrel surged again with the wave—up, up, then holding for an endless moment, then down. The movement sent a shaft of pain stabbing through his head. Jesu. What was wrong?

As the pain splintered light into his brain, the top of the barrel lifted and a beautiful, golden-haired woman peered in at him, smiling. He tried to call to her, but his throat closed around the words.

Darkness swirled, then she was there again—the golden angel. He made another desperate attempt to speak, but all he could produce was a moan of pain. His groan echoed off the sides of the barrel. As the sound grew louder and louder, the angel slammed the lid of the barrel shut on top of him, and everything went black.

Brother Alois, acting abbot of St. Gabriel, seemed to assume that it had been Brother Francis who had bathed the wounded man and dressed him in one of the monks’ own habits. Neither Bridget nor Francis bothered to correct him. But after her intimate session with the stranger the previous evening, Bridget had decided to let the monks take over the nursing. She’d spent one of her restless nights with visions of outside the walls. She dreamed that she’d accompanied the monks to market all the way to Rouen, walking freely beside them along the road, and that everyone they passed on the way looked like the handsome stranger lying in the monks’ quarters.

She woke up resolving to stay away from the visitor, and kept her resolve throughout the day until evening when Francis came to request her help. “You mentioned one of your poultices, child, and I think it might help, for the poor lad has surely got the blood poisons.”

She’d finished cleaning up from dinner and the monk had caught her leaving the kitchen, ready to retire to her little home next door to it. Long ago, the small brick building had been a brewery, and the faint, yeasty smell of ale still clung stubbornly to the masonry walls. But Bridget had lived there these past ten years or more, ever since the monks decided that she needed a place of her own with a sturdy door and proper latch.

It was not that they thought any member of their order capable of the unimaginable sin that those precautions suggested. But, Brother Alois had cautioned gravely, none of them had thought Bridget’s father capable of such a transgression, either.

Bridget looked remorseful. “I’d meant to put a poultice on last night, but then I…I was distracted, I fear.”

“Will you do it yet tonight or wait until the morrow?”

“It’d best be soon. I’ll just prepare the paste and go on over to him.”

Brother Francis looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ll wait and go back with you.”

“Nay, brother. You’ve been up tending him since well before dawn. Go on to your bed. It won’t take me but a few minutes to see to him, then I’ll be safely back to my house.”

After a moment’s more convincing, Francis turned to leave, and Bridget went back into the kitchen to prepare one of her medicinal poultices of marjoram and feverfew.

Bridget had begun to study the healing arts years ago after the death of one of her favorite monks from a relatively minor injury. She’d spent nearly a month closeted in the monastery library, and then had persuaded Brothers Ebert and Alois to purchase herbs on one of their market forays. Since then, she raised the plants in her own garden, and the health of the monks of St. Gabriel had flourished accordingly.

It was dark by the time she made her way over to the monks’ quarters. As she approached the building, she felt an odd excitement at seeing the stranger again. She slipped through the tiny back door that admitted her directly into the hall next to the wounded man’s chamber.

After Francis’s sober report, she was surprised at first to see that the patient looked better than he had the previous evening. But as she approached the bed, she saw that the improved appearance was due to a heightened color that was the ominous foreshadowing of seizures and death. She’d seen it before when wounds had become poisoned.

The gravity of the man’s condition banished all other thoughts from her head, and she barely glanced at the lean body she had washed with such avid curiosity the previous day. She sat beside him on the narrow cot and removed the head bandages.

As before, he groaned at her touch, but she steeled herself to ignore the sound, and applied the poultice, pressing gently to be sure that the healing herbs would reach every part of the wound.

Under her fingers his scalp was burning. The man meant nothing to her. Indeed, if he recovered, his presence at the abbey could prove to be dangerous to her very existence. But she found herself offering up a quick prayer to St. Bridget. It seemed too cruel that death would take someone so young and so strong.

He moaned again as she rewound the bandage tightly to hold the herbs in place. “You must fight, Sir Stranger,” she whispered. “Summon to battle the healing powers of your inner soul.”

At her words, the wounded man stirred, then opened startling blue eyes and looked directly at her.

Chapter Two

Bridget gasped and pulled backward, letting the bandage slip from her hands. Her first thought was to flee, but as the head dressing started to unravel, causing the poultice to slip, she realized that she would have to finish the job she’d come to do and worry about the consequences later.

He watched her with unblinking eyes. “Are you awake, then?” she asked, hesitating.

He didn’t answer. Perhaps the head wound had struck him dumb, she thought. Or perhaps he spoke no French. She repeated the question in Latin, with the same result.

As quickly as she could, she finished tying up the bandage, though it was unnerving to work on his head with his eyes open and staring. Even in the dim candlelight, their blue was intense.

“Do you understand me, sir?” she asked.

There was no movement of his dry lips.

Bridget sat for a moment. How ironic, she thought. These were the first words she had ever addressed to someone from outside the abbey, and they appeared to have no more impact than a milkweed hitting a pond. She shivered. Perhaps she’d been born as some kind of otherworldly sprite, destined to live within the monastery walls and be seen and heard only by the monks. She’d read of faeries, but she’d never before believed herself to be one.

Could he see her? she wondered. She waved a hand in front of the man’s eyes and was rewarded with a blink. She was, at least, not invisible.

Of course, it was just as well that he couldn’t understand her, but she couldn’t hold back a sense of disappointment. She was curious to know more about their visitor. Where had he come from? What had happened to him? She rose to her feet with a sigh. Now that he appeared to be regaining his senses, she would not be able to come here again.

“Angel,” he said, the word an almost unrecognizable whisper.

Bridget stopped and turned back to the bed. She’d finished her nursing and, if the man was talking, she should leave immediately. Instead, she walked back over to the cot and sank to her knees beside it. “Can you hear me?” she asked him.

“Bandits,” he rasped.

“Aye, you were set upon, evidently, and they’ve given you a nasty gash, but we’re taking care of you. I’ve treated you with some herbs.”

Beads of sweat stood out above his lips. He appeared to try to swallow, then said, “Thirsty.”

Bridget picked up a mug of tea that had been left on the floor and brought it to his lips. When it was apparent that he couldn’t lift his head, she slipped an arm behind his neck and lifted him against her chest so that she could help him drink.

“Not too much,” she cautioned.

He took another swallow, then sank back heavily against her arm. “Thank you, my angel.”

Bridget smiled. “I’m no angel, just a maid.” Her sudden fancy about being other than human had disappeared with this very human contact. The man could obviously see her and talk to her, and she to him. It was exhilarating.

There was an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Angel,” he insisted, then he clutched her arm with surprisingly strong fingers and said, “Help me.”

His action startled her, but she answered, “Fear not, you’re in safe hands now, good sir. No one will hurt you here.”

“Help…find…Dragon,” he said. His eyes had gone a little wild, and a dangerous flush had come over his face.

He was looking for a dragon? Is that what he had said? Bridget bit her lips. She’d read about dragons, but she’d formed the opinion that such a creature may not truly exist. “You must rest and get well. Let the monks tend your wounds until you heal.”

“Diana,” he groaned.

Bridget was confused. Perhaps it was a woman he was looking for, not a dragon. But in any event, he didn’t have the strength to lift his head, much less go on a search. And this agitation could not be helping his cure. Perhaps she should brew him one of the sleeping teas she sometimes made for Brother Alois. “Can you not rest quiet?” she asked him. “’Tis the best thing for you now.”

Bridget couldn’t take her eyes from his striking features, which were full of anguish. He was so different from the monks. It wasn’t just his youth—there was a raw strength about him that she’d never seen among the peaceful brothers at St. Gabriel.

Suddenly the hand that held her sleeve pulled her toward him. Startled, she fell against his chest. His arm came around her and, before she could react, his mouth touched hers. “I’ll find him, Diana,” he whispered.

Bridget jumped backward, one hand flying to her lips. She opened her mouth to give an indignant protest, but stopped as she saw that the patient had slumped back on the cot, his eyes closed and his mouth sagging.

She gave his shoulder a tentative shake, but he didn’t respond. Her hands were shaking. She sat a moment, regaining her composure. He’d been out of his head, she assured herself. He’d obviously mistaken her for this woman, Diana. It had meant nothing.

But, nevertheless…she walked slowly from the tiny chamber and slipped out the back door into the cool night. The man had been delirious. He was a stranger, possibly even a malefactor. But nevertheless, she’d just had her first kiss.

“You were out of your head, my son. The mind plays tricks.” Brother Francis’s voice wavered slightly at the unaccustomed need for deceit.

“No, I swear, Brother. There was a woman in this room last night.” Ranulf struggled to sit up, and looked around the tiny cell. The idea was preposterous. The monk had explained that he was inside a monastery, being cared for by the brotherhood. Yet his visions of the lovely midnight angel had seemed so real.

His head swam with pain and he lay back against the hard straw pad. “I could have sworn she was real,” he said.

Francis smiled. “Mayhap ’twas a vision sent by the Lord to guide you through your extremity. None of us thought that you would survive such a wound.” He gestured to Ranulf’s bound head.

The waves of pain were receding. “I have to survive. I’m on a mission, and my family is depending on me to accomplish it.”

His family and others, as well. The image of Diana as he had last seen her, eyes flooded with tears, flashed through his head. He’d loved her as long as he could remember, but Diana’s heart had always belonged to Dragon. And Ranulf was determined to bring him back to her.

“From the looks of you, young man, it appears that your mission is a perilous one.”

“Nay, no one knows me here. I believe the brigands set on me by chance.”

“They were robbers, then?”

“What else?” Ranulf hesitated, trying to remember the scene. It seemed far away and unclear. He continued slowly, “Though I believe they were too well mounted and outfitted to be common thieves. The man who struck me wore armor as fine as any I’ve seen.”

Francis gave a little shudder. “There are still outlaw knights in this land. ’Tis a sad remnant of the holy effort to free the blessed sites of Christendom from the heathen.”

His attempt to recollect the incident on the road was making Ranulf feel sick. His earlier visions of the golden-haired angel were much more pleasant, but although they’d seemed as real as the feel of the mattress straw prickling his neck, they had evidently been conjured up by his delirium. “So no woman has been tending me?” he asked with a little sigh.

The monk seemed to scrunch up his face. Then he made a quick sign of the cross and said loudly, “No. There’s no woman at St. Gabriel Abbey.”

It was just as well, Ranulf mused as the round little monk stood and bustled out of the room. In his dream, Ranulf remembered kissing her—his angel-vision. He’d been confused for a moment, thinking that he was with Diana again, taking his leave, promising her to find Dragon. Ranulf closed his eyes, remembering. His angel may have been a phantom, but the petal-soft touch of her lips still lingered on his mouth.

Most of the buildings at St. Gabriel were made of fieldstone, with roofs neatly thatched by the brothers’ own hands. They formed a tidy quadrangle broken on one end by the graveyard that stood next to the monastery church. Isolated as it was in the wooded hills nearly two hours’ walk from Beauville, the closest town, the church claimed no parishioners other than the brothers themselves, which suited them fine. That meant that they didn’t have to deal with a procession of priests sent by the local bishop to meddle in their routine.

It also meant that few visitors came to explore the abbey grounds and take note of the odd building nestled in the woods about a quarter of a mile to the west of the church. The monks called the building the work shed, though it was far larger than any structure that would normally fit that term. It was as tall as the bell tower of the church, and, other than the barn, which housed the abbey’s two mules, three milk cows and assorted other animals, it was the only building at St. Gabriel made entirely of wood.

Bridget avoided the work shed whenever possible. It was where the monks usually carried out their tinkerings, which was what the monks affectionately called their inventing efforts. One never knew what variety of odor or sound would be emanating from the ramshackle structure.

But when Francis failed to bring her a report on the progress of the patient, her curiosity made her seek the monk out at his afternoon labors.

Francis and Ebert had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the shed for the past fortnight. They’d traded their duties in the gardens with other monks so that they could continue work on their latest creation, which was a refinement of the water clock Ebert had invented.

She’d be the first to admit that the monks’ ingenuity had made life easier at the monastery. She now had a spit that turned the meat automatically, driven by a device in the wall of the fireplace that turned with the heat of the fire. Of course, before the scheme had been perfected, she’d seen the ruin of at least half a dozen perfectly good roasts.

Bridget shook her head as she approached the building and was greeted with a barrage of loud bangs. She opened one of the huge wooden double doors and peered inside. Ebert was bent over his clock, a contraption consisting of small cups fastened around the edges of a wheel. Ebert was tall and thin. Even stooped over, his head rose above Brother Francis.

As Bridget entered, the clanging from the far end of the shed stopped. It had come from near the monks’ special pride, a large furnace they had dubbed a blast fire because of the peculiar roar of the air through it and the force of the heat it generated.

Sometimes Bridget found herself drawn into the monks’ plans, in spite of a resolve to stay detached, but today she had other things on her mind. She walked directly over to Francis and asked, “How is the patient? Has the poultice helped his wound?”

Francis’s smile looked a little nervous. “It may have helped too well, child. He’s regained his senses and had questions this morning about being nursed by a woman. A golden angel, he called you.”

Bridget grinned. “I’ve always tried to tell you that I’m much holier than you give me credit for.”

“’Tis not a cause for mirth, Bridget. It could have been disastrous, but I think I’ve convinced him that you were but a fever dream.”

Bridget’s grin faded. A fever dream. That was all she could ever be to anyone from outside of these walls. “If the fever’s broken, he should have a new poultice,” she said.

Ebert had straightened up to his full height and towered over both his fellow monk and Bridget. “Francis is right, Bridget. You must not be seen by the stranger again.”

“Make up the poultice and I’ll take it to him,” Francis added.

Bridget felt an unaccustomed prickle of resentment. She had thought of little else but the wounded stranger all day long, and it seemed unfair that now that he had regained his senses she must hide herself away. “I should see the progress of the wound myself,” she argued. “It will tell me what herbs to add to his cure.”

Both monks regarded her gravely, shaking their heads. “There’s no way for you to see him, child,” Francis said gently. “I’ll give you a fair report.”

Bridget bit her lip. The monks at the far end of the shed were watching the conversation. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the brothers apart at a distance in their identical habits, but she could somehow always recognize Brother Cyril. He was not plump like Francis, nor tall like Ebert, but there was just something about him, the way he moved, his energy and determination. Whereas most of the order were relaxed and happy, Cyril always seemed to be moving impatiently from one task to another. Bridget suspected that much less work would get done at the abbey without Brother Cyril’s pushing.

Cyril and two other monks were working around the big furnace, but Bridget knew that including them in the debate would not help her cause. The monks were united in trying to protect her from the outside world.

“Is he of right mind?” she asked Francis. “Has he told you about himself?”

“Aye, he tells me his name is Ranulf.”

“’Tis a Saxon name.”

“Aye. He’s English.”

Bridget hid a little shiver of excitement. The man was not only from outside the walls of the abbey, he was from outside of Normandy itself. He had traveled the world, crossed the water. She had a fierce desire to talk with him. An hour or two in his company would no doubt teach her more than a month in the abbey library. It was impossible, of course. But at least she could see the man again.

“I’d like to check the wound myself,” she said. “I’ll wait until he’s in a sound sleep tonight, then I’ll just slip in and change the dressing. If I’m gentle, he shouldn’t wake.”

“’Tis a foolish risk to run for the sake of a stranger,” Ebert observed.

“The stranger is nonetheless one of God’s children, is he not, Brother Francis?” She appealed to the monk she knew to have the least resistance to her pleadings.

“Aye, but…”

“And therefore deserves no less care than the worthiest of saints. Is that not in the Rule?”

Though every waking minute of the Cistercian life was supposedly ordered by the sacred set of laws called the Rule, none of the monks of St. Gabriel were too well versed on exactly what the holy proclamation contained. Francis and Ebert exchanged a bewildered look, and Bridget seized her advantage.

“’Tis so, exactly,” she exclaimed. “I’ve read it myself, and as a dutiful, if unofficial, daughter of this abbey, it’s my place to abide by its teachings. I’ll go to the stranger tonight while he’s in a sound sleep. If he wakes up, he’ll think it’s his angel come to see him once again.”

“Child, we cannot—” Francis began.

“It’s settled, then,” Bridget interrupted, and before he could continue his argument, she spun around and skipped lightly out of the building.

Henri LeClerc, Baron of Darmaux and Mordin Castles, sat in his high-ceilinged receiving chamber at Darmaux and glared at the man in front of him as if he were some kind of bug that had crawled out from one of the cracks in the drafty stone wall.

“I didn’t tell you to kill the man, Guise,” he said. “I told you to find out why he was asking directions to St. Gabriel.”

Charles Guise, sheriff of Beauville, did not flinch at the baron’s scathing tones. “You were right, mi-lord. The man was obviously a fighter. He put up more resistance than we had anticipated and I thought it best to get rid of him at once.”

“You thought?” LeClerc stood and walked toward the sheriff until his odd violet eyes were only inches from Guise’s. “You’re not in my service to think, Guise. Now we have no idea what this English knight was doing here or how much he knew about the abbey.”

The sheriff met LeClerc’s gaze. “As I said, he was a warrior. We may not have been able to take him alive.”

“Five of you? Against an unarmed knight? Do I have nothing but mewling babes working for me?”

Spit from the baron’s vehement words flew into Guise’s face, but the sheriff appeared to take no notice. “I’m sorry milord is displeased,” he said.

LeClerc made a sound of exasperation and stalked back to his chair, sitting down heavily. “We should probably talk to our holy friend at the abbey to find out if he knows why the man was headed there.”

“It’s some time before our monthly meeting, and we’ve agreed not to approach him on the abbey grounds.”

“I don’t care how you manage it, just talk to him.”

“As you wish, milord.”

“What have you done with the body?”

For the first time, Guise looked uncomfortable. “It seems to have been…misplaced, milord.”

LeClerc’s eyes narrowed into two violet slits. “Misplaced,” he repeated slowly.

“Aye. After the skirmish, we rode away and by the time I had reconsidered the matter and sent some men back to dispose of him, the body was gone.”

All the fury had disappeared from the baron’s tone as he said in silky tones, “Which means, my dear sheriff, that you aren’t even sure that the man is dead.”

“Oh, he’s dead, all right. I can’t imagine a head hard enough to survive the blow I gave him.”

In the same deceptively soft voice, the baron continued, “I want this man found, Guise. Dead or alive.”

“Aye, milord,” the sheriff acknowledged with a bow.

“I suggest it be soon.”

Guise’s palms began to sweat. “Aye, milord,” he said again. Then the baron waved him out of the room.

It had been easier to daydream about another visit to the sick man than it was to carry it out, Bridget realized as she stood in the little hall outside Ranulf’s cell. What if he wasn’t asleep? What if he awoke and this time realized that she was no holy creature but a flesh-and-blood woman?

What if he mistook her for the unknown Diana once again and tried to repeat his kiss? The thought sent a rush of blood to her cheeks.

With the warm poultice cooling in her hands, she took a deep breath and stepped into the dark room. Her candle flickered a dim light over to the bed. Bridget gave a small sigh of relief as she saw that not only was the patient breathing in deep sleep, he was flushed with the night fever. Her ministrations could again be explained away in the morning as a dream.

She sat next to him on the bed. In spite of the fever, he looked better. The sunken shadows around his eyes were gone. She’d read that the Saxons were a fierce people. She’d wager this man could be fierce enough if pressed. She could read his strength in the broad line of his jaw and the power of his shoulders. Her gaze drifted to his full mouth. His lips on hers had not been fierce at all. They’d been tender and warm.

She straightened her shoulders. She had no business thinking about that kiss. Biting her own lip against the memory, she briskly began unwinding the bandage around his head. He moaned and half opened his eyes.

“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s all right. I’m here to help you get better.”

“Angel,” he rasped.

“Aye, ’tis your angel come to tend you once again. Close your eyes and sleep if you can.”

But his eyes opened wider. “You’re not Diana,” he said.

He’d got that much straight, at least. “Is Diana your wife?” she asked.

With obvious difficulty, he shook his head and whispered, “She’s to be…Dragon’s wife.”

“Nay, I’m not Diana. And there are no dragons here, sir, so you need have no fear. You’re safe inside the abbey and we’re going to see that you recover.”

“Angel,” he said again.

“I’ll be your angel, if you like,” she said. She pressed the poultice in place and made quick work of binding him up. He winced once but stayed still. When she had finished, she sat back and smiled at him. “It’s much better, though the fever rages yet.”

He reached up and grabbed her hand. “Who are you?” he asked.

The sudden clarity in his blue eyes unnerved her. “I thought we’d settled that,” she said. “Didn’t you say that I was your angel?”

His gaze moved slowly from her face to the place where her plain linen gown framed the soft skin of her neck and chest.

“Aye,” he answered slowly, his voice growing stronger with each word, “but I was mistaken. If heaven had angels such as you to offer, my beauty, men would be falling on their swords in droves just to reach there.”

All at once Bridget felt as if she were the one with a fever. Her cheeks flamed.

“There’s the proof of it,” Ranulf continued, gesturing weakly toward her face. “Angels can’t blush.”

The remark was so absurd that Bridget couldn’t help a tiny laugh. “How do you know that, sir? I don’t recall any such prohibition in the scriptures.”

“They’re holy creatures. They don’t suffer from such human frailties as embarrassment or—” he stopped to study her, his eyes growing even more intense “—or shyness. Which is it that tints those fair cheeks so prettily?”

These were not the ravings of a delirious man, Bridget realized, in spite of his fever flush. This man was as sane as she and totally aware of her presence. She stood in alarm, the discarded bandage falling heedlessly to the floor. “I pray you, sir, close your eyes and sleep. On the morn you will remember that an angel tended you this night, and if you remember anything else about our encounter, I would ask you to put it out of your mind.”

He reached for her hand. “Don’t go, please. Be my angel, then, and I won’t question you further, I promise. Just sit by me awhile longer and let me look at you.”

His grasp was weak, and she could have easily slipped her hand loose, but instead she let him pull her gently back down to the bed. “I must go,” she whispered. “You need rest.”

For the first time, she saw him grin, a boyish, engaging smile that made the breath catch in her throat. “Ah, fair maid, they say to look upon beauty can be a more powerful cure than any herbalist’s powder.”

Once again Bridget’s face flamed at the unaccustomed comment on her appearance. Her discomfiture made her answer sharply. “Who says such nonsense?”

“My grandmother Ellen, for one. And she’s been healing the good folk of Lyonsbridge for three score years.”

Each moment she continued talking to him compounded her risk, but her curiosity prickled. “Lyonsbridge? ’Tis your home?”

“Aye. It’s in England, but my grandmother is Norman. She grew up here in Normandy.”

Bridget tried to picture this Norman woman. What would it be like to travel to a strange land, to make a home there and raise a family? “Is your grandmother a healer?” she asked.

The man hesitated a moment, then said, “She tends her people as the lady of the estate.”

Bridget’s eyes widened. So this man who lay abandoned and helpless in their abbey was not an itinerant wanderer, but the grandson of a lord. That meant that there would no doubt be inquiries. If she and the monks didn’t get him well and send him on his way soon, people might come to St. Gabriel looking for him.

She pulled her hand away from his and stood. “You’ve talked too long, milord,” she said stiffly. “I must insist that you sleep.”

“I’m no lord, angel. My name is Ranulf Brand. And since we’ve established that you’re not one of the heavenly host, I’d like to know your name, as well.”

Bridget shook her head. She could not tell this man her name. Outside these walls she had no name; she didn’t exist.

“Won’t you tell me?” he coaxed.

She shook her head again, more vigorously, then turned and fled the room.

Chapter Three

Like a moth drawn to the brightness of the fire, Bridget found herself obsessed with a dangerous desire to see the stranger again. She wanted to ask him all about his home across the water—this Lyonsbridge. She could only begin to imagine all that he could tell her of life outside the walls. But the monks had guarded the secret of her presence all these years. She didn’t dare expose it. She would not see the Englishman again, she told herself firmly as she mechanically performed the morning chores. She would not even venture near the monks’ quarters until he was safely away from the abbey.

But she could not rid herself of the memory of his blue eyes and teasing smile. His words ran over and over through her mind. Her ears rang with the sound of his deep voice as he’d called her “angel.”

At midday she gave up the idea of getting in a good day’s work and wandered across the courtyard toward the church. Her conscience told her that she should spend the rest of the day on her knees begging the Lord’s forgiveness for being ungrateful for the life she’d been given. But instead, she turned away from the church door and went to the attached building, which housed the abbey’s collection of manuscripts. As usual, the library was empty.

It was a poor collection compared to the great monasteries in other parts of Europe, but it contained the expected religious texts, which were dusted by one of the monks each month and rarely, if ever, read. The brothers of St. Gabriel were more interested in the scientific volumes, and these they kept out in the work shed, where they would be readily accessible.

Bridget sometimes thought of the library as her own private sanctuary. She’d read every single book many times, but she returned most often to a special cupboard that contained volumes deemed unsuitable for perusal by the brotherhood. She’d been nearly fifteen years old before she’d dared look inside. Once she’d begun, however, the books had become her favorites. She read the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus who had traveled all the way to the underworld to find his lost Eurydice. She sighed over the love poems of Ovid. But she was most fascinated with the tales of the great English king, Arthur, and his bold knights.

She took out the volume and began to read, though she could as well have recited the words by heart. Was Ranulf a knight? she wondered. They’d found him stripped of all possessions, but if he was from a noble family, surely he had come on horseback. He did have the strength of a warrior, she thought, flushing as she remembered the night she’d stripped away his bloody tunic.

Eagerly her eyes raced over the familiar words. Lancelot had come from the continent to England to join Arthur’s fabled court. There he had found love with beautiful Guinevere. Now this knight, her knight, had come from England to the continent on his own noble mission. Would he too find love? Bridget smiled at her own fantasy.

The knight lying in the monks’ quarters dressed in one of their habits had nothing to do with the legendary Lancelot. Nor would a poor girl raised in a forgotten monastery have anything in common with the fabled English queen.

“Bridget! Are you in here?”

Brother Francis’s voice interrupted her dreaming. Quickly she closed the wooden cover of the big book and slid it back on the shelf. “Aye, I’ve been studying,” she said, jumping up from the stool and going to meet the monk at the door before he could pay too much attention to the corner of the room that had been occupying her attention.

Francis’s face was grave, and Bridget’s first thought was of the patient. “Is he worse?” she asked in alarm. “Has the fever heightened?”

Francis shook his head. “Nay, he’s better. That’s the problem. He’s on his feet, even, and swearing to Alois that he intends to search the monastery until he finds the lovely nurse who has cured him.”

Bridget winced. “Didn’t you tell him I was part of the delirium?”

“Aye, sweet mischief maker. But this time he’s too sure of his own faculties. He’ll not hear me.” He gave her a reproving gaze. “I told you ’twould be foolish to go to him again.”

Bridget tipped her head, considering. “Well then, you’ll have to tell him that I was a maid from Beauville whom you brought here to tend him. Send him there to search for her.”

“I’d have to tell a falsehood—” he began.

“Forgive me, Brother, but how many falsehoods have you told these many years to keep my presence a secret? One more will do nothing to alter the toll, I wager.”

“I’ll think on it,” he said. “But for the moment, I’m to bring you to Alois.”

Bridget groaned. Alois was the abbot of St. Gabriel. He had always seemed to Bridget to be a fair man but, unlike Francis, he had absolutely no sense of humor. She knew that his reprimand for her actions would be much more severe than Francis’s gentle chiding.

“The stranger himself said that I may have saved his life,” she told Francis.

“Aye, child. We all know that your medicines can work wonders, but ’tis the other that has raised Brother Alois’s concern.”

“The other?” Bridget asked.

Francis averted his eyes and stumbled over the words as he explained, “This man—the, um, patient—he’s claiming that he kissed you.”

As it turned out, Bridget had had to face not only Brother Alois, but also Brother Cyril, the abbey prior, and Brother Ebert. She might have expected Ebert, since he was the brother who, by common consent, had most to do with the outside world. It had been Ebert who had first found the wounded stranger on the road, and Ebert was the monk who most often rode to the city when the necessity arose for some item that the monks could not grow or create themselves. Most often this meant something for one of the monks’ inventions.

The three awaited her arrival sitting side by side on the high trestle bench in the small sacristy at the back of the church. They wore identical habits, since Alois refused to distinguish himself from the others by wearing abbot’s robes. Bridget knew she had nothing to fear from them, but at the moment they resembled three vultures perched on a log.

Francis stood next to her as she stopped in front of them.

“My child,” Alois began. “You have been our charge these many years, and every one of us in this brotherhood has vowed to protect and care for you.”

“I know, Brother, and I’m sorry if I’ve caused—”

Alois held up a hand. “’Tis no fault of yours, Bridget. The fault was ours for not realizing how difficult it would be to keep you from the world now that you’ve grown into a—” the abbot stumbled over the words “—into a mature woman.”

Bridget had been called to account before for minor transgressions, but she sensed something different about this audience. She was used to gentle chiding, a softly reproving smile. Instead the expressions on the faces of her three accusers seemed to reflect something resembling fear.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Brother Ebert leaned forward. “Do you have something to tell us, Bridget? Did this man—this stranger—do anything—anything—”

He stopped. The words were beyond even the worldly Ebert.

Bridget felt a tug at her heart. What Alois had said was true. The brothers had cherished and protected her as if they had been her parents, but somewhere along the line it seemed almost as if she had become the mother and they the sons. She knew little of the world, but thanks to her readings, she probably had more sense than any of them about what could happen between a man and a maid. She could see that the monks were afraid for her, and that they had no earthly idea how to communicate either that fear or the love that inspired it.

She wished she could go to each one of them and give them an embrace, but that, of course, was forbidden by the Rule. Instead she tried to put her feelings into her smile. “You can stop worrying about me. Nothing passed between me and our visitor. Perhaps I should not have tended to him myself, but there’s no help for that now.”

Cyril was tapping a foot nervously on the crossbar of the bench. “She says nothing happened. What more do you want from the girl?” he asked impatiently. “Make her promise not to see him again, and let’s be done with it.”

Bridget rarely saw Cyril outside of the work shed, and she imagined he was anxious to return to whatever experiment he was currently conducting.

Ebert nodded agreement, but Alois looked uncertain. “As abbot, I must be sure.”

Francis, who’d been standing next to Bridget, spoke for the first time. “The man was in a fever, brothers. He scarcely remembers what transpired, and soon he’ll be gone. I don’t think we need to take any further action.”

With his three brother monks waiting for his word, Alois finally nodded agreement. “Do you promise, Bridget?” he asked.

Bridget nodded. “I’ll stay well out of sight until he’s gone.”

Alois let out a long breath. “Very well, then. We’ll speak of the matter no more.” The three monks stood with noticeable sighs of relief, then filed silently out of the room.

Ranulf sat on the edge of the bed hoisting the heavy cloth belt in his hand. The thieves who had robbed him, if they had been thieves at all, had either been incredibly impatient or stupid. They’d taken his horse, his weapons, his outer clothes, even his boots, but they’d left him wearing a small fortune beneath his undertunic. And the plump little monk had just restored it to him untouched. For a man who’d been nearly beaten to death, Ranulf was amazingly lucky.

“How far is this town, Brother?” he asked Francis. “And what’s the maid’s name? I’d like to visit her home to thank her and compensate her for her service.”

The monk’s cheeks jiggled as he gave a vigorous shake of his head. “She’d not receive you, sir. Nay, ’tis best left alone. The only reward any of us wish is your return to good health. With the fever gone, it shouldn’t be long before you regain your strength and can be about your business.”

Ranulf was not ready to tell the monk that his business was to begin here at St. Gabriel. He wanted his strength back and his head totally clear before he began his inquiries about Edmund.

“I appreciate what you all have done for me, Brother,” he said, “but I believe it was the maid’s medicine that saved my life, and I don’t intend to leave without showing my gratitude.”

Francis sighed. “Beauville is a long ways from here, Sir Ranulf. You’re not yet strong enough for the trip.”

Ranulf’s head still hurt, but his mind had regained its sharpness. Something in the monk’s words confused him. “If she lives so far from here, how was it that she was tending me in the middle of the night?”

“You must be mistaken,” Francis answered stiffly. “She comes at midday.”

Ranulf glanced at the tiny window where a shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom of his cell. Had he been that muddled? he wondered. Or were day and night all one in this foreign land?

“She treated me by candlelight. I remember it distinctly.”

“Ah, sir, you were in too sorry a state to remember anything distinctly. Now I think it’s time for you to lie down and get some sleep, lest you fall back into the delirium you’ve just left.”

Ranulf looked from the monk down to the money in his hand. “Shall I give this back to you for safekeeping?” he asked.

Francis laughed. “You need have no fear of thieves inside the walls of St. Gabriel. Your coin has no value to us here.”

Ranulf shook his head in wonderment. He’d never met such men before. The monks who had tended him seemed to be uniformly content with their lot. They appeared to have none of the failings of ordinary men—greed, ambition, desire.

He dropped the heavy belt to the dirt floor beside his bed. “I’ll just leave it here for now. But though your holy brotherhood may have no interest in my gold, I’ll warrant my nurse would find good use for a few of these coins. I still intend to seek her out when I can mount a horse.”

“Mules are the only mounts you’ll find here at the abbey.”

“Until I can mount a mule, then.” Ranulf grinned. “I haven’t been on one since I was a page, but I won’t disdain the beast if it will take me to where I can outfit myself anew.”

“They are steady creatures, I’m told, though I haven’t been on one myself. I keep meaning to give it a try.”

Ranulf bit back a laugh at the picture of the rotund little monk on top of a mule. “Perhaps we’ll go seek the maid together—when I’m well enough.”

“Perhaps,” Francis said with a nervous smile. “Now, sleep. The sooner you regain your strength, the sooner you can be back on your journey.”

Ranulf nodded and settled back on his cot. The monk seemed anxious to be rid of him, and even more anxious to avoid his questions about the beautiful woman who had come at least twice to his bedside. There was something odd about the monk’s story of a village maid, and it had been night when she had visited him. He was sure of it. He didn’t understand why they were being so evasive, but he was determined to find out. He was anxious to begin his inquiries about Dragon, but his brother had been missing for three years—the quest could wait another day or two while he solved the riddle of his mysterious angel healer.

It was good to feel the sunshine on his face, Ranulf thought, especially considering how close he’d come to never feeling anything ever again.

“So where is this magnificent mule you’ve promised me, Brother?” he asked Francis as they walked across the courtyard toward the barn.

The monk smiled. “Are you sure you’re ready to try riding? Your wound is still fresh.”

“Aye, but my brain is like to rot from the inside out if I don’t get away from that cell for a while. I’ll just give it a try, and see how it feels again to be up on a mount—any mount,” he added with a rueful twist of his mouth. He’d brought Thunder, his big gray stallion, all the way across the Channel only to have him taken by his assailants. The loss hurt more than his head wound.

“At least our mules will give you no trouble. They’re old and lazy. They had other names once, but for years now they’ve been called Tortoise and Snail.”

Ranulf joined in the round monk’s hearty laugh as they reached the open barn doors and went inside. The mules faced each other in stalls on opposite sides just inside the entryway.

“Which is which?” he asked.

Francis started to answer, then stopped as a scurrying sound caused both men to turn their heads toward the back door of the barn. Ranulf’s eyes had not adjusted to the dim interior, but as he looked toward the patch of daylight coming through the small rear entry, he saw a slim shape dash around the edge of the door and disappear.

Francis cleared his throat loudly. “This is Tortoise,” he said, taking Ranulf’s shoulder and turning him toward the right-hand stall.

Ranulf twisted his head to look back toward the far door. He was almost sure that the figure he’d seen slipping through it had been a woman.

“Has my nurse come to visit from her town?” he asked Francis.

The monk shook his head. “Nay. She’ll not return now that you’re well.”

“I thought I saw—” He nodded toward the rear of the barn.

“The stable boy? He comes to muck the stables every few days.”

Ranulf frowned. “I thought you said the monks did all their own work here.”

“Aye, except for—except for this, er, stable boy. He lives on a farm nearby, from a poor family, he needed the work….”

In Ranulf’s experience, men who had taken holy vows were invariably honest, but once again he had the feeling that the congenial Francis was trying to deceive him. He’d caught only a glimpse of the figure in the barn, but he was now almost certain that it had been the young woman he was seeking.

He listened absentmindedly as Francis introduced him to the two mules, who, while not Thunder, were not the sorry creatures he’d feared. Either one would do to get him as far as a town where he could purchase a new mount and weapons.

He reeled with a wave of dizziness as he swung up onto the back of the one they called Snail, but soon recovered his balance. A short walk around the barn was all he needed to see that he was perfectly capable of riding once again, though he did tire quickly.

He’d give himself a day or two more to recover, he decided, handing the animal back over to Francis. In the meantime, he’d try to discover why the monk was lying to him about his beautiful midnight nurse.

Bridget raced around the back of the abbey buildings and darted inside the kitchen, breathing heavily. It had been a narrow escape. She’d promised to stay safely hidden while the stranger was still at St. Gabriel, but she’d come seconds away from running smack into him.

“How was I to know Francis would bring him wandering around the barn?” she asked aloud to the abbey cat who lay curled beside the fire. The tawny animal gave a delicate yawn and went back to its nap.

At first, Bridget had thought the man was another of the monks. He still wore the habit she’d dressed him in that first night. But it had taken only moments for her to realize her mistake. Even in the rough habit, you could see the visiting knight’s broad shoulders and powerful arms. And the robe ended well above his ankles, since he was taller than every brother in the abbey, with the possible exception of Ebert.

Bridget lifted the stone jug from the table and poured herself a cup of ale. She was hot and irritated. She knew that the monks were right to keep her from the visitor, but she hated having to run away like a frightened rabbit.

“What would be the harm in a few minutes of conversation with the man?” she asked the cat, who raised its head again with an expression of annoyance. “He’ll ride away soon and forget he ever saw me here. Would it be the end of the world or the end of St. Gabriel to have one person from the outside learn of my presence here?”

The cat’s only answer was the continued stare of its big black eyes. It appeared to be waiting to see if there would be further interruptions of its mid-morning slumber. When Bridget remained silent, the big furry animal stretched out its front paws and lay back down to sleep.

The monks of St. Gabriel had a schedule of duty—kitchen, garden, repair, animals—that they rotated to give everyone a fair turn. Bridget had devised the system. Until she had taken charge, work had been performed haphazardly. She participated in much of the work herself, but caring for the animals was not among her assigned tasks. She did, however, make it a practice to check the barn daily to be sure that everything had been done properly.

Any lapses would not be due to laziness or lack of will. But more than once a monk who was engrossed in testing a new method for making gates open by themselves would forget that he had left a cow unmilked or the pigs with no feed.

The sudden arrival of Francis and Ranulf had prevented her from making her normal morning rounds. Missing a day would make little difference, but when she finished cleaning up after the evening meal, she decided to give the barn a quick walk-through before she retired to her little house.

The long spring twilight was fading as she opened the heavy barn doors. Patches of pink sky showed through two openings in the roof of the big building, but the interior was dimmer than during her usual visiting hours. She should have brought a lantern, she thought. A gust of wind through the doors at her back made her shiver.

The barn was quieter than in the daytime. Some of the animals had already nestled down for sleep. The two mules tossed their heads as she passed, but quickly lost interest when they saw that her hands were empty of the carrots she occasionally brought them.

She moved along the center aisle, her eyes skimming over the three cows, the coop full of chickens. Everything seemed in order, and the sky above her was growing darker by the moment.

Shrugging off a sense of unease, she turned to leave.

Suddenly a hand grasped her arm and an unmistakable deep voice said, “Good evening, angel.”

Chapter Four

Bridget gasped and spun around to look up into blue eyes that were kindled with amusement.

“Do you come by night to nurse animals as you do wayward travelers?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat felt clogged with hay dust from the stable floor. “I—I—” she stuttered.

His smile died as he saw the panic in her expression. “Calm yourself, angel. I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’ve been looking for you these two days past in order to thank you for my cure.” He pointed to his still-bandaged head. “I probably owe you my life.”

“Nay, ’twas nothing. I must go.” She twisted sideways to pull her arm from his grasp, but he held her firmly.

“I won’t hurt you, mistress. I promise. Don’t run away again.”

Bridget’s head was ringing with the dire warnings the brothers had given her over the years about what would befall them all if her presence became known. The dangerous game she had played with the stranger was no longer a game. It was obvious he was too well recovered to ever be convinced that seeing her had been another dream.

“You don’t understand,” she pleaded. “I beg you, let me go.”

For another long moment, their eyes held, hers anguished, his puzzled. Then he released his hold on her arm. Without another word she pushed past him, ran out of the barn and into the darkening night.

Ranulf stood staring after her retreating form for several moments. One of his questions had been answered, at least. The maid was real. It was no wraith whose strong, slender arm he had held. The face that had looked up at him with such alarm was not that of an otherworldly creature, but of a flesh-and-blood woman with a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and a wild-rose blush painting her cheeks. The lips he’d once touched with his own in the throes of his fever had been full and red.

He realized with sudden shock that his brief encounter with the mysterious young woman had left him shaky with something akin to desire. Jesu. He’d never been a man to woo and love lightly. In fact, he’d scoffed at those of his fellow Crusaders who were desperate enough to seek out the women of the stews to ease their bodily needs.

He’d always preferred to turn his own thoughts to loftier channels. Though he’d never admitted it to anyone, he’d often used the vision of Dragon’s promised bride, Diana, when the weariness of battle had made him long for more tender thoughts of women and home. Oddly enough, Diana’s ethereal beauty suddenly seemed tame next to the memory of the woman he’d just confronted in the barn.

He looked around him. Night had fallen, and the animals had grown quiet. He could barely make out their forms in the darkness. He started walking slowly toward the doorway, his mind whirring with questions. Why had she fled? What was she afraid of? And why had Brother Francis lied about her?

He reached the courtyard and squinted to see across it in the dusk. There was no sign of his beautiful nurse. Across the square was the church with the small cemetery beyond. On his left were the monks’ quarters and to the right a kitchen. The small brick building beyond that? Could she have gone there?

He continued walking to the middle of the square. The tiny building had no window, and there was no light showing from underneath the crack of the door. If his nurse was inside, she was sitting in the dark.

Ranulf sighed. He did not yet have enough strength to search the whole compound for her, especially at night. His lifesaver would remain a mystery for another night.

Francis had consulted with Brother Ebert and Abbot Alois.

“Bridget, it’s simply too dangerous for you here right now,” Alois told Bridget gently as she sat in stunned silence on his bed in the abbot’s chamber. “The Marchands are kind people. They’ll give you a good home. If anyone discovers you there, Mistress Marchand has agreed to introduce you as her niece, the daughter of a sister who has died.”

“That would mean living with some deceit, Bridget,” Ebert added. “But no more than we have all had to bear over the years. I’m sure God will forgive us since it has all been done in an effort to keep you safe.”

Bridget shook her head and said firmly, “I won’t go. What would you do without me here?”

Francis sat beside her on the abbot’s narrow cot and, ignoring the conventions of his order, put an arm around her and drew her against his plump shoulder. “We shall have to manage, Bridget. We’re not totally helpless, you know. We did get on somehow before you came.”

“But the kitchens…the gardens…the work orders…” Bridget could not believe what she was hearing. They were sending her away from the only home she’d ever known, all because she’d exchanged a few sentences with a stranger who would no doubt continue on his travels and never bother them again.

“We’ll all miss you dreadfully, Bridget, and we’ll try to keep the abbey from falling apart in your absence.” There was a touch of amusement in Alois’s voice.

“You may like it on the outside, Bridget,” Ebert added. “It’s time you had a life of your own that involves more than caring for a bunch of old men.”

Bridget looked up at Francis, who still held her clutched to his side, then at the anxious faces of Alois and Ebert hovering over her. She was beginning to realize that, unlike times in the past when she’d been able to sweet-talk or bully the monks into seeing her side of things, this time they were not about to be swayed. “I’ve never wanted any life but this,” she said, her voice faltering. “I’m happy here. Please don’t send me away.”

Alois straightened up. “It’s already decided. Ebert will take you tomorrow before dawn. By the time our English visitor wakes up, you’ll be gone. Now you’d best get some sleep before your journey.”

Her momentary weakness past, Bridget slipped out of Francis’s arm and stood, facing all three of them, her hands on her hips. “I won’t go,” she said again. “I’m sorry that I’ve worried you by speaking with the stranger, but he’ll be soon gone, and I’m not going to let his visit disrupt the life of this entire abbey.”

Francis rose heavily to his feet. “I’m afraid the abbot is right, Bridget. It’s the only way to protect you. What would people think if they knew you’d been raised among us?”

“I don’t care what they think.”

“Ah, but you profess to care what becomes of this abbey,” Alois said gravely. “And if it were known that we had kept you hidden here all these years, it could endanger our very existence.”

This was an argument Bridget had not considered. “Do you think the church would—”

“Holy orders have been disbanded for less grievous offenses,” Alois interrupted.

She sat back down on the bed in stunned silence. Though she could hardly fathom the thought, it appeared that she might have no choice but to agree to the abbot’s decision. She was going to be banished from her home and all the people she loved.

Struggling with rising tears, she said, “Promise me that once the stranger leaves, you’ll let me return.”

Francis gave a sad smile. “Lass, you’re about to discover a whole new world that you’ve never before experienced. By the time the Englishman leaves us, you may not want to return here.”

“I shall want to return here,” she said fiercely. “St. Gabriel is my home, and it always will be.”

The monks exchanged a sad glance, but none of them tried to argue with her.

“So as soon as he leaves, you’ll have me back?” she asked again.

“We’ll discuss the matter at that time,” Alois said stiffly.

And she had to be content with that.

Ranulf found Brother Francis leaving church after morning prayers.

“How’s your head today?” Francis greeted him. It seemed to Ranulf that some of the monk’s usual enthusiasm was missing.

“Each day a little better,” Ranulf replied. “But I’ve not sought you out to discuss my condition. I’ve come for some answers.”

Francis looked around. A number of the monks were leaving the church, making their way to their morning tasks. He nodded his head toward the far end of the courtyard. “We’ll talk over at the vegetable garden,” he said. “It will be more private, and in any event, I’m on cook duty today.”

Neither man spoke until they had crossed to the other side of the compound and reached the good-sized plot of land where the monks grew most of their produce. Francis picked up a basket from the edge of the tilled area and gestured with it toward Ranulf. “Did they ever set you to harvesting vegetables in that fancy estate of yours, lad?”

But Ranulf was not about to be distracted from his purpose. He ignored the monk’s question and the offered basket, saying instead, “I saw her again last night, Brother Francis—the midnight nurse. Why did you lie to me about her?”

Francis hesitated, then set the basket back on the ground and turned to face the younger man. “May the Lord forgive me, son, but I had my reasons. I’ll ask you to inquire no further about the maid.”

“But why? Can’t I at least have an explanation? This woman saved my life, remember.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ll not give me her name? Nor tell me where I can find her?”

“I cannot.”

Ranulf wondered at his own insistence in the face of Francis’s obvious misery. He should forget the girl and put his mind on the business of finding his brother, but something compelled him to find out about her. His head was starting to throb again. He set his jaw and returned the monk’s implacable gaze. “Then I’ll make my own inquiries. I warrant someone in town will be able to tell me about her. There can’t be too many young women of her description with the healing powers.”

Francis winced, then he hiked the hem of his habit, knelt awkwardly at the side of the vegetable patch and reached once again for the basket. “You are a very stubborn young man,” he said.

“Aye. So I’ve been told.”

“She’s no longer here,” Francis said finally, beginning to pick beans off a tangled vine. At Ranulf’s skeptical expression, he glanced up at him and continued, “I’m telling you the truth this time. She left this morning for Beauville. But you must believe me when I tell you that inquiries could put her very life in danger.”

This was not what Ranulf had expected. He’d speculated about different reasons for the monk’s reluctance to tell him about the girl, but this notion had not been among them. Looking around at the gentle green hills that surrounded the humble abbey, he asked, “What could threaten a young maid’s life in this peaceful place?”

Francis continued his methodical picking. “Once again, I can’t tell you. ’Tis a secret guarded over these many years. But I would beg you to put her out of your mind.”

Suddenly Ranulf’s curiosity about the beautiful maid took on a whole new meaning. If the monk’s words were true—if his mysterious nurse was truly in danger—then perhaps he’d been brought here to help her. He’d seen such miracles before on Crusade.

“I’d like to help her,” he said.

His tone was so earnest that Francis put down the basket once again and dropped his head to his chest, lost in thought.

Sensing that the monk was weakening, Ranulf pressed his case. “I’d do nothing to harm her, Brother. I swear it by the holy rood. And perhaps it would be in my power to help her.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do to help,” Francis said slowly. “But if you give your sacred word never to speak to anyone of the circumstances under which you met her, I’ll tell you where she is. You may go to thank her and give her whatever reward you would like for the services she rendered you.”

Ranulf felt a peculiar elation that seemed out of proportion to the simple fact that he would have the opportunity to give a proper payment to a young woman who had tended him. “Where is she?” he asked eagerly.

Francis shook his head. “First, your word.”

“That I’ll not speak of her?”

“Aye.”

It seemed a strange request, but Ranulf nodded. “Aye, you have my word.”

Brother Francis looked into the basket. The bottom was scarcely covered. With a grunt, he pushed himself off the ground with both hands and stood. “The information will cost you,” he said, dusting off his hands.

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