The last thing Willow expected Bannor to do was draw the arrow from his shoulder, give it a puzzled glance, then toss it over his shoulder, all without missing a step. Surely, she thought, ‘twould be only a matter of seconds before he crumpled face first into a pool of his own blood.

Jerking herself out of her horrified daze, she lifted her skirts and went running across the meadow. She cleared a sagging rail of the fence in a graceless bound and went staggering right into his arms.

Her words came spilling out in a jumbled torrent. “Oh, Bannor, can you ever forgive me? I forgot I was holding the bow and then I saw you and you smiled at me and I had just rebuked Mary Margaret for taking her eye off the target and oh, I never meant to shoot you, I swear I didn’t!”

He cupped her elbows, holding her steady. “Was that your arrow? I thought one of the pages had misfired again.”

She tugged at his arm. “Make haste, my lord! You must lie down before you collapse!”

“But I feel fine,” he protested, shooting Hollis a bemused look.

“Of course you don’t! The pain and blood loss are simply impairing your judgment.”

Willow threw her arms around his neck, attempting to drag him to the ground. Their scuffle was beginning to attract the curious stares of Bannor’s men.

“All right! All right!” he shouted, sinking to his knees in the sand-sprinkled grass. “There’s no need to throttle me. I’ll go quietly.”

As a crowd gathered around them, Willow drew his head into her lap and began to stroke his hair tenderly. “There, now. Doesn’t that feel better?”

“I do believe it does,” he murmured, snuggling his head deeper into her bosom.

Hollis rolled his eyes. “I can assure you, my lady, that there is no need for alarm. Lord Bannor has endured far worse insults at the hands of the—”

Bannor cleared his throat, cutting him off. “Perhaps Lady Willow is right.” He allowed his eyes to drift shut. “I am beginning to feel a bit light-headed.”

Bannor was beginning to feel other things as well, most of them centered in the region of his loins. He never dreamed he’d allow his men-at-arms to see him stretched out full-length on the ground with his head in a woman’s lap. But Willow’s wordless murmur was like the haunting notes of a siren’s song, both sweet and seductive. He was no stranger to the gifts of women. He had partaken eagerly of their many pleasures. But he had always denied himself their comfort, equating its solace with a weakness he could not afford.

Desmond’s flat voice penetrated the silken web Willow had woven around him. “What happened to him?”

“Willow shooted him. He’s going to heaven.”

Bannor opened one eye to find his daughter standing over him, her mane of golden curls haloed by the sun. “Would you miss me, sweeting, if I died?”

Mary Margaret thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. “Don’t s’pose so. It can’t be much farther away than France.”

“He can go straight to hell for all I care.”

Willow gasped and both of Bannor’s eyes flew open to meet Desmond’s defiant stare. Kell and Edward cupped their hands over their mouths to smother their shocked giggles. The men gathered around them shuffled their feet and exchanged uneasy glances as they awaited their lord’s explosion of wrath.

Bannor sighed wearily. “I hate to disappoint you, lad, but the only place I’m going right now is to bed.”

“Can you walk, my lord?” Willow inquired, shooting Desmond a savage look. “Or shall I have your men fetch a litter?”

“I believe I can walk.” Bannor blinked up at her, using his thick, dark lashes to their full advantage. “With your help.”

She braced her slender shoulder beneath his, helping him to his feet.

As they went staggering toward the castle, Sir Darrin dragged off his helm and scratched his grizzled head. “That’s most odd. Lord Bannor never needed any help the time he crawled out of that moat in Poitiers with a dozen arrows poking out of his back.”

“Or the time he escaped from that dungeon in Calais after they’d starved and tortured him half to death,” one of his companions added.

Sir Darrin shook his head. “I do hope he’s not going soft on us.”

Hollis poked his nose between the two men. “As long as Lady Willow is around, you needn’t fret yourselves about that.”

———

Willow kept her arms wrapped tightly around Bannor’s waist as she led him through the broad passages of the castle, bellowing orders that sent the flustered maidservants and pages scurrying to fetch bandages, hot water, and a cornucopia of healing herbs.

As they made their way up the winding stairs, she glanced over to find Bannor eyeing her askance. “What is it, my lord?”

“I can’t believe I ever thought you had a small mouth.”

Willow might have chided him for the jibe if he hadn’t suddenly grabbed his shoulder and let out a heartrending groan. Only after she had him settled in his bed did she dare leave him long enough to retrieve the supplies she’d requested from the servants hovering outside the door.

Bannor reclined on a nest of pillows while Willow arranged the bandages, a basin of steaming water, and a bowl of fresh herbs on a bench beside the bed. “Desmond didn’t mean what he said, you know,” she said without looking at him.

Bannor snorted. “Of course he did. The lad loathes me.”

Willow crumbled a pinch of marjoram into the water, shaking her head. “If he loathed you, he’d be indifferent to you, not furious with you.”

Bannor cocked his head to study her. “How is it that you know so much about that wayward son of mine?”

She devoted all of her attention to folding the bandages into narrow strips, then dipping half of them into the water. “Because there was a time in my life when I would have done anything to make my father take notice of me. Even told him to go straight to hell.” She gave Bannor a wry glance. “Or insisted upon wedding a man I’d never laid eyes on.”

A shadow flickered across Bannor’s face. “An act of mutiny you’ve no doubt had great cause to regret.”

Instead of replying, Willow said lightly, “Let’s take a look at that wound, shall we?”

Bannor winced as she gently pried his hand from his shoulder. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement as she smoothed her fingers over the flawless linen of his shirt. She glanced at the opposite shoulder, where a narrow slash marred the fabric.

Bannor immediately shifted his grip to that side. “It must have been phantom pain. Tis a most vexing sensation.”

“Most vexing indeed,” Willow murmured, surveying him through narrowed eyes. His sun-bronzed skin didn’t betray even a trace of pallor.

She peeled the shirt from his shoulder with less care than she had been taking, but all of her sympathy and remorse came flooding back when she saw the puckered wound that marked his smooth flesh.

“Oh, Bannor, I should have never been so careless.” She wrung out one of the bandages and gently dabbed away a thin trickle of blood. “Can you ever forgive me?”

He heaved a ponderous sigh. “Fortunately for you, I’ve never been one to hold a grudge.”

She tried to tug his shirt farther down his shoulder, but the rich linen resisted her pull. “I believe I’d be able to better dress your wound if we took this off.” Without waiting for his reply, she began to wrestle the garment over his head.

“That might not be the best idea,” Bannor said, his voice muffled by the material.

But it was too late. The garment had already unfurled in Willow’s hands, leaving her to gaze in naked amazement upon his exposed chest. It was God who had wrought a masterpiece from the powerful slabs of muscle and crisp coils of dark hair. And it was man who had done all in his power to destroy it.

When she had spied upon him in the tower, the flickering candlelight had shielded her from the most shocking of his secrets. Robbed of speech, Willow reached out her trembling hand and stroked her fingertips across the jagged scar that ran from the top of his breastbone to the bottom of his rib cage.

“I earned that one in my first tournament,” Bannor said softly, keeping his gaze on her face. “ ‘Twas a blessing that the lance just grazed me.”

Still mute, she traced the thin rope of scar that bisected his left nipple and curved around his heart, then looked at him questioningly.

“A dagger. King Philip of France hired an assassin who crept into my tent while I was sleeping, stabbed me, and left me for dead.” A dangerous smile quirked his lips. “The man was most surprised when I paid a visit to his tent the following day and returned his dagger.”

She touched the pocked circle to the right of his breastbone, then the identical scars on each side of his heart.

“Arrow. Another arrow. Yet another arrow,” he confessed, rolling his eyes.

He drew in a ragged breath as her hand skated lower, grazing the shiny, rippled flesh that covered half the plane of his abdomen, then disappeared into his hose.

“Boiling pitch.” He shrugged. “ ‘Twas my own fault really. I didn’t roll over the top of the wall fast enough.”

He stiffened, but didn’t protest when she urged him forward. As his back came into view, Willow finally found her voice, choking out a gasp.

His back was pocked with arrow scars even more numerous and vivid than the ones on his chest. It wasn’t those souvenirs of battles both won and lost that made her eyes sting, but the pale wheals that crisscrossed the satiny expanse of flesh from his broad shoulders to his lower back.

He tensed as she traced one of them from beginning to end. “A mere twenty lashes. My French jailers were most displeased when I strangled one of the guards with the whip he was using to beat me.”

Overcome by emotion, Willow wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his ravaged back, wishing there was some way she could heal him with the balm of her tears.

Bannor’s breath left his lungs in a raw shudder. He was a man born with an almost inhuman tolerance for pain, yet Willow’s tears sent a jolt of pure agony through him. He struggled to hide it behind a rueful laugh.

“I cannot blame you for hiding your face. I know this battered body of mine is a frightful sight to behold. Now you know why I always chose to bed my wives in the dark. Beneath the blankets.”

Willow’s lips flowered against his back, leaving him suspended somewhere between pain and pleasure. “You wear your scars as badges of honor, my lord. They are beautiful to behold.”

Bannor held himself rigid as she kissed each one in turn. “I never dreamed you’d be so cruel as to torture a confession out of me,” he said unevenly. “Very well. I confess. The wound you gave me is naught more than a scratch. I simply used it as an excuse to escape the clutches of my children and lure you to my bed before midnight. I was never even light-headed. Although I’m beginning to feel that way now.” he muttered. His eyes drifted shut as Willow began to nibble her way around the muscular column of his throat.

Willow was remembering the first time she’d seen him—how she had longed to explore each of his imperfections just to prove he was real. Her prince seemed only a pallid ghost of a man, as she nuzzled her lips against the tantalizing shadow of a beard that always darkened Bannor’s jaw and breathed in the fragrant spice of his skin. His eyes were closed, his thick lashes fanned against his cheeks. He groaned deep in his throat as she touched her lips to his.

Her prince’s teeth had been without flaw, which only made the chip in one of Bannor’s front teeth more beguiling. She traced its jagged edge with her tongue, driving him to the verge of madness. Before he could seize that elusive prize for his own, she had drifted lower.

Her prince’s chest had been as smooth and hairless as a boy’s. Willow raked her fingernails through the whorls of dark hair that swirled over Bannor’s chest, savoring their crisp texture, before pressing her mouth to the broad ribbon of scar that ran from his breastbone to his rib cage.

She rained moist kisses down its length, longing to give pleasure where before there had been only pain. If Bannor’s ragged breathing was any indication, he was suffering a bit of both. Her fingers sought the grave insult carved by the assassin’s dagger. It made her tremble to think that someone had tried to still forever the mighty heart beating beneath her hand. As she swirled her tongue around the rigid nub that had been bisected by that treacherous blade, Bannor tangled his hands in her hair, breathing an oath that sounded more like a prayer.

Her puckered lips caressed the puckered flesh around each arrow scar before gliding down, down, down, until they reached the burn scar on his abdomen.

Bannor would have sworn he hadn’t had any sensation in the area of that scar for over a decade, but just watching Willow’s ripe mouth glide over his ruined flesh was enough to make him dizzy with longing.

When her luscious lips traced the scar all the way to the top of his hose, his muscles contracted with crazy anticipation. He seized her by the shoulders, drawing her up to his eye level. “Now might be a good time to warn you, my lady,” he growled, “that I don’t have a shilling on me.”

A bold and silky smile curved her lips. “You won’t be needing one, my lord, unless you wish to hold it between your knees.”

Bannor’s wariness melted to shock when she inclined her head to tug at the drawstring of his hose with her teeth. The slight sag in the fabric was all she needed to reach a belly that had rarely even been exposed to the kiss of the sun. As her questing mouth eased the hose even lower, Bannor would have sworn he was on fire again, the flickering flame of Willow’s tongue a taste of both heaven and hell. He nearly came off the bed when she gently cupped her hand around him through the hose.

“ Tis a most imposing codpiece, my lord,” she whispered, her breath tickling his belly.

“I’m not wearing a codpiece.” he gritted out between his clenched teeth.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, managing to sound both sultry and innocent at the same time.

Bannor collapsed against the pillows, throwing an arm over his eyes.

Willow decided to take his hoarse groan as one of surrender. She held her breath as she eased down his hose. In her innocence, she had never even dared to imagine her prince as possessing such a mysterious wonder.

Her breath escaped in a reverent sigh. The imperfections that had come before only made the perfection of him seem that much more overwhelming. She cupped him in both hands this time, shyly measuring both the length and breadth of him. His fulsome splendor only made the hungry ache within her deepen.

Bannor’s hips bucked as Willow’s lips tenderly enfolded him. ‘Twas a boon neither Mary nor Margaret had thought to grant him, and one he would have been too proud to propose. He could not resist watching as Willow took him, not in darkness, nor beneath the blankets, but in the dazzling sunlight that spilled through the west window, limning her hair in silver.

He fisted his hands in those dark, silky curls, unableto decide if his bride was a she-devil or an angel. In truth, he did not care. He only knew that he was blessed to be held in her tender thrall for as long as she would have him. And have him she did. He threw back his head and roared with ecstasy as she delivered a sweeter death than any assassin, an arrow to the very heart of him.

He was still suffering fierce aftershocks when he dragged Willow into his lap and tangled his tongue with hers in a long, hot kiss.

They both started guiltily when an impatient knock sounded on the door, followed by Mary Margaret’s imperious tones. “Willow, has Papa gone to heaven yet?”

Bannor buried a chuckle in Willow’s hair. “Indeed he has,” he whispered, “and you, angel, are the one who sent him there.”

———

The chapel bells were just beginning to chime twelve times when Willow slipped into Bannor’s tower that night, a wooden platter tucked in the crook of her arm. She deposited her burden on the table, arranging cheese, bread, and flagon of mulled wine in a welcoming tableau.

She took one of the torches dipped in pitch from its iron bracket and used it to light the nest of kindling she had arranged on the hearth earlier that evening. A cozy crackling soon filled the tower, along with the crisp fragrance of burning pine. She doused the torch in the bucket of water kept in the corner for just that purpose, preferring the gentle flickering of the firelight.

Willow surveyed her efforts with satisfaction. But as she wandered to the bed, she knew the warmth, food, and wine were only a shadow of the pleasures to come. Her breath quickened with anticipation as she remembered the promise of sweet revenge Bannor had whispered in her ear, before reluctantly extracting himself from her embrace and going to reassure Mary Margaret that her papa wasn’t going to heaven just yet.

The quilts were rumpled and the mattress still bore the imprint of Bannor’s body. Unable to resist the temptation, Willow kicked off her shoes and clambered up on the bed. She curled her body into the larger hollow left by Bannor’s, feeling as snug as a baby animal in its burrow.

When Willow awoke, the chapel bells were tolling again. Once. Twice. Three times.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes, both puzzled and disoriented. The cheese and bread sat untouched on the table; the fire burned low on the hearth, casting little more than shadows.

“Bannor?” she whispered. Her timid query was greeted by silence.

Without bothering to don her shoes, Willow slipped from the tower and padded down the stairs.

She poked her head in the first door she came to. Although the children had several beds between them, they nearly always ended up in the massive four-poster shared by Desmond, Ennis, Kell, and Edward. But tonight Desmond slumbered there alone, looking impossibly lost in the middle of that enormous bed. With his mouth hanging open and his lashes resting against his freckled cheeks, he looked closer to five than thirteen. Willow gently drew the blanket over him, wondering if he remembered ever having a mother to do so.

Growing more perplexed by the moment, she crept down the broad stone stairs that cascaded into the heart of the castle. Since it was not uncommon for drunken stragglers and weary travelers seeking shelter from the cold to linger after an evening of merriment, she was not surprised to find a heap of bodies huddled around the hearth.She was surprised to discover that the heap of bodies belonged to the lord of the castle and his offspring.

Willow bit back a smile. It appeared the children had lost their valiant battle to stay awake until midnight. And so had their father.

Bannor lay in their midst like a fallen giant cast into an enchanted slumber by a sparkling pinch of fairy dust. Meg, Margery, and Colm had their little heads pillowed on his muscular thighs. Ennis and Mary sprawled on the two benches flanking him while Hammish, Edward, and Kell curled up at his sides. Edward was mumbling in his sleep and Hammish’s mouth was pressed to Kell’s ear. Willow could only pray the lad didn’t dream he was partaking of some tender delicacy.

Bannor held Mary Margaret snuggled in the crook of one arm. Although she had claimed not to care if he went off to heaven or France, her little hand clenched the front of his doublet as if she had no intention of ever letting him go. When she whimpered in her sleep, Bannor’s arm tightened around her, forming a brawny shield that no night terror, no matter how bold, would dare to challenge.

When the chapel bells had tolled midnight only three short hours ago, Willow would have sworn she had everything she had ever desired. But as she gazed at the dark and gold heads of father and daughter through a blur of tears, she discovered that she was really no better than a greedy child herself, always craving more than she had.

‘Twas no longer enough that Bannor should want her. She wanted him to love her, too.

Just as she loved him.

The realization made her heart ache with a bittersweet yearning more keen than any she had ever felt for her prince. Until that moment, she had never understood how Bannor could consider love an affliction. But as she slipped silently from the hall, she was already beginning to shiver with a fever from which there was no cure.