Curse of the Celts by Clara O'Connor (most romantic novels .TXT) 📕

him off so lightly if he was actually apologising for what had happened on our way north. His part in it at least had not been on purpose. Gideon, on the other hand, I would hold accountable until the last day I drew breath.

The bed, despite its considerable substance, moved under Marcus’s mighty exhale. “I shouldn’t have left, I definitely shouldn’t have risked exposure by hooking up with some random Briton in a village, and I’m sorry that Devyn got hurt.”

Was he sorry? Actually sorry? He’d had a right to be angry that night in the barn; I could hardly blame him for wanting to put some distance between us that night. He had still been grieving for his father and the loss of the only life he had ever known for an uncertain future in this primitive and hostile land. Even without the handfast cuffs complicating everything, his storming off was understandable.

I reached up to the hand on my shoulder and put mine over it.

“Okay,” I said softly. I pushed away from the chemical reaction I felt and focused on the Marcus I had known before the handfast: the caring physician, the warm friend, the charismatic social centre of every group. Someone I realised I had not seen in a while. Marcus on the road here had been quiet – not cold but solitary. He spoke seldom and interacted with others as little as possible. I knew he was still grieving, but in trying to push away this terrible handfast attraction, I realised I had pushed away my friend. My friend who was in pain.

I couldn’t risk turning around to embrace him, not here in the dark with just the two of us, but I pulled his arm around me and tucked it into my body, hoping he understood that comfort was all I could offer him. He stiffened, but as I made no further move, he relaxed, and eventually his breathing evened out.

I woke the next morning, for once warm and cosy. The coldness of my nose was the only indication that something was not as it had always been… before. In the comforts of the city. I blinked my eyes open to find the wintry sunlight streaming in through the window set in the bare granite walls of Devyn’s father’s castle.

Devyn. My heart thumped at the remembrance that he was not here. He was not here. The dread made my body heavy in the soft grey light.

Then who…?

I twisted round in the bed and took in the handsome sleeping face that shared my pillow. Marcus.

Abruptly, I pulled myself out of his arms and with a thump found myself on the bare rug that was all that separated me from the wooden floor. A floor which I had hit with my now tender arse.

“Ow,” came a laughing voice from above. “That sounded like it hurt.”

Marcus’s face appeared over the side of the bed above me, a genuine smile on his lips – the first I had seen there in what felt like for ever.

“Morning.” I smiled back ruefully.

“Come back into the warmth,” he invited. “I promise I’ll find a way to restrain myself.”

Disgruntled, I nonetheless dove back in; it was freezing outside the covers.

“That’s what you get for being in such a hurry to escape my arms,” he teased. I looked over at him, his green eyes lighting with a warmth that hadn’t been there since his father, the arena, the illness, the escape This was the Marcus I had known for only a few months of summer in the time before.

“Well, if your giant hulk wasn’t taking up most of the bed…” I shot back.

“Hulk! I’m just a little tall,” he said, “though not so much out here with the Britons.”

“Most of the Britons we’ve met so far have been warriors. I’m not sure how typical they are,” I reassured him, giving him a patronising pat on the shoulder.

He huffed in laughter before his eyes grew sombre.

“Lord Rhodri has it, Cassandra,” he said.

I blinked, not following.

“Has what?”

“The illness.”

I thought back to the man by the fireside the night before. He hadn’t looked ill, a little frail maybe, but he was old so surely…?

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He doesn’t seem too far gone. His skin is a little off colour and there is a tremor in his hands. He looks older than he should; I would put him at late forties, but he seems ten years older somehow.” He shook his head. “The symptoms don’t match the ones I’ve seen in the city – there is something faded about them – but I’m certain that’s what it is.”

“Bronwyn knew he was ill when she came to Londinium,” I recalled. “She wanted Devyn to leave then, to go home with her and make peace with his father.”

“That’s not possible. The Treaty Renewal was over two months ago.” Marcus frowned. “His symptoms should be far worse by now.”

I thought back to the patients he had treated at Bart’s. Once the first symptoms showed, the illness progressed rapidly, the prognosis fatal in weeks, not months.

“Maybe he’s sick with something else.”

“No.” Marcus sounded sure. “He has the illness, but somehow they are holding it off.”

“You think they’ve found a way to treat it?” I asked, happy to see the confident medical professional in Marcus resurface.

“Fidelma spoke of a treatment,” he reminded me as he braved the cold and jumped out of bed with renewed purpose.

We arrived in the hall to the sound of raised voices. A short man in a long hooded travelling cloak who stood facing Lord Rhodri fell silent as we entered the room.

“Is this why you called me back? What do they need?” He spoke gruffly and wasn’t terribly welcoming at the sight of strangers in his lord’s hall. “Well, what do you need? Speak and let me be back on the road.”

Marcus and I looked at each other in bewilderment. What on earth was going on?

“His lordship has called back his healer.” A deep voice drew my