"Thanks mean so little. Would you have had me watch you bleed to death? Is there no one in the world who would have missed you?"
"I do not know," said Kit, with a thought of Yoredale and the light in Ripley Castle.
"Ah, there’s another secret out! She has flouted my dear Puritan."
"I will not have that name! There was never a Metcalf yet but stood for the King."
The cannonade outside grew louder, and Miss Bingham looked out again at the red spurts of flame. "A painter should be here," she said, turning at last. "My six-foot Puritan, what a picture it would make—the blue April sky, and the little tufts of cloud, fleecy as lambs’-wool, and the outrageous crimson flaring from the guns! Will they contrive to hit the Castle again, think you? It is time their marksmanship improved."
"I was thinking of Prince Rupert," he said stubbornly. "If Michael cannot ride with me, I must go alone."
Miss Bingham’s heart was touched at last. This man, who could scarce stand from loss of blood, disdained her coquetry, and had one purpose—to find Rupert for the raising of the siege at York. Selfless, reliant in the midst of weakness, he saw the one goal only.
He bade her farewell, and asked Amory to find his horse for him. "But, sir, it is death to sit a saddle," protested the other. "Your wound——"
"It must heal or break again. That is the wound’s concern. Mine is to find Rupert, as I promised."
Amory glanced quietly at him and wondered at the hardness of the man. "How will you get through the besiegers? Their cannon are pretty busy, as you hear."
"I had forgotten the besiegers. I must leave my horse, then, and find a way out on foot."
He got half-way to the outer gate, his weakness palpable at every step. Then his foot tripped against a cannon-ball that had fallen yesterday. He fell on his right shoulder, and the wound reopened in grim earnest.
Miss Bingham was the most troubled, maybe, of all the Knaresborough garrison during the week that followed. By all past knowledge of herself Michael should have been her chief concern. He was so gay and likeable, as he recovered slowly from his head-wound; his tongue was so smooth, his heart so bendable to the lightest breeze of a woman’s skirts. Yet she found herself constantly at Kit’s bedside, fighting the evil temper that had mastered him. He was consumed with rebellion against this weakness that kept him abed, and his persistent cry was that Rupert needed him, and would know that he had failed. He was still so young to the world that he believed all England knew what the Riding Metcalfs were doing for their King.