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,