Love Beyond Time Read Free

language she
could not understand, then said a word she did know.
    “Angel?”
    “ Ange ?” she repeated. “Oh, I
comprehend. You think you are dead and I am an angel? I’m afraid
not. I am far from being an angel.”
    He grew still again – listening to her, she
was sure – and then he opened his eyes.
    They were blue, the deepest, purest, most
heart-stopping blue she had ever seen. In his sorely damaged face,
swollen and bruised and streaked with dirt and scratches, and
smeared with blood from his injured nose, those eyes were like
torches in a dark forest. Not even the famous piercing blue gaze of
Charles, king of the Franks, had ever affected Danise the way this
unknown man’s eyes did.
    “Who are you?” she whispered, caught and held
by light and color and unmistakable intelligence. When she saw the
puzzled expression invading the blue depths, she repeated her
question, speaking slowly and carefully, hoping he would understand
her.
    He said something and started to shake his
head. The movement elicited a groan of pain. The blue eyes closed
and he slipped away from her, back into unconsciousness. Only then
did Danise realize she was still holding his hand, clutching it in
both of hers, pressing it against her bosom. She let it go, laying
it upon his chest and stroking the limp and dirty fingers with her
own white ones.
    “Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please don’t
die. I want to know you. I want to hear you speak again in that
strange language.”
    It seemed a long time before Clothilde
returned, leading Savarec, his man-at-arms Guntram, and a third man
whom Danise did not know. The black-bearded Guntram carried a
rolled-up litter made of two wooden poles thrust through the hems
of a length of strong fabric.
    “Clothilde has explained what happened.”
Savarec knelt beside his daughter. “Is he still alive?”
    “Yes, he’s breathing, and now and then he
moans.” Danise met her father’s level gaze. “He opened his eyes for
a moment or two, and he tried to speak, but I could not understand
him.”
    “If he wakened, it’s a good sign.” It was the
third man who spoke, a golden-haired fellow with a pleasant face.
He went to his knees and put out a hand, feeling the unconscious
man’s head and apparently coming to the same conclusion as Danise.
“He has a lump here, beneath his hair. From the blood on this rock
beside him, I’d guess he hit his head on it when he fell.”
    “Danise,” said Savarec, noting his daughter’s
questioning look, “this is Count Redmond. I had planned for you to
meet him under more agreeable circumstances, but this moment must
do.”
    “On the contrary, Savarec,” said Count
Redmond, “these are agreeable circumstances, for your
daughter has shown herself to be both intelligent and discreet.
Another maiden might have run into the camp crying to anyone she
met that a strange man had been found in the forest, thus leading
everyone gathered at Mayfìeld to imagine we faced a Saxon
attack.”
    “This man is no Saxon,” Danise said,
certainty in her voice. “I have seen Saxon prisoners and heard them
speak. He is unlike any of them. His speech, his clothing, his
hair, his clean-shaven face -”
    “As I said, Savarec,” Redmond interrupted,
“an intelligent young woman.”
    “Father, he will need good care,” Danise
said. “Will you have him taken to your tent? Clothilde and I can
nurse him, and if you think it’s necessary, you can easily set a
guard there to watch him.”
    “Yes,” said Savarec, “that’s what we’ll do.
We’ll keep your cloak over him, Danise, to hide his strange
clothing, and if anyone asks who we are carrying on the litter, we
can say he’s one of my men-at-arms who met with an accident. That
way, we’ll cause no alarm. But I will tell Charles in private what
has happened, in case he wants to post more guards around the
camp.”
    Guntram unrolled the litter, and he, Savarec,
and Redmond lifted the unconscious man onto it. With