The lines on her face suddenly looked more pronounced as she shook her head. “Sometimes children who have lived on the street for a long time are unable to accept love and a home. We had tried a couple of times before Jorgen to take in orphaned boys, but they always ran away, sometimes getting in trouble for stealing, and then . . . We usually never heard from them again. But Jorgen was extraordinary. I could see that right from the start.” A wistful smile transformed her features.
“For a while Jorgen had trouble trusting people, but he was always kind to anyone he thought needed help, and he never stopped being so. And he trusts you.” She glanced at Odette without lifting her head.
Odette had seen the pain in his eyes when he asked her why she had deceived him. After all he had been through as an orphan, now the woman he had thought he loved had cruelly violated his trust. “You mean, he trusted me. He could not trust me, not after . . . what he knows about me now.” She might as well mention what Frau Hartman surely knew.
“He knows what was in your heart.”
Had she spoken to Jorgen this morning? Could he still love Odette after what she had done? Could he forgive her?
Even if he forgave her, he would still have to tell the margrave that she was the poacher.
She felt as if she had swallowed a bag of rocks. At least her worries about what would happen when the margrave found out took her mind off the pain in her arm and leg.
Frau Hartman sat placidly sewing, a slight smile on her lips.
Odette closed her eyes to rest them and immediately started drifting. Blessedly, the herbs were making her fall asleep again.
26
WHAT SORT OF torture was this, having Odette in his house, in his bed, but knowing she was there because he had shot her?
Jorgen continued his job of checking the forest for signs of deer. He would have to report his findings the next day. What would he say when the margrave asked him about the poacher? And what would the margrave do to him if he knew he was harboring the poacher in his own home?
Jorgen still had a lot of questions to ask Odette. Perhaps he was foolish to believe that she had thought she was poaching for the children. How could an intelligent woman like her be so fooled? Surely she had seen clues of Rutger’s deceit and lawbreaking. And there was the small matter of her grazing his shoulder with her arrow. After he had told her, more than once, about the poacher, about his fear that the margrave would hire someone else to take his place as forester . . . And all the time she must have been laughing at him.
Soon he headed toward home again. He was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, but he also wanted to see how Odette was feeling. She had seemed so weak that morning.
Truly, he was a fool.
Jorgen went inside his bedchamber. His mother was sewing near Odette’s bedside. Odette lay still, her eyes closed, her blond hair spread across the pillow. She took his breath away, lying there asleep, looking so vulnerable.
His mother looked up and smiled at him. She stood and left quietly. She knew Odette was the poacher he had been searching for. After her husband was killed by a poacher, she must feel at least some resentment toward Odette. She also knew, at least in part, how Jorgen felt about Odette. What was going through his mother’s mind? Did she think him as a big a fool as he thought himself?
He desperately needed sleep. If he were wise, he wouldn’t try to talk to Odette without it, but he wasn’t feeling particularly wise.
Jorgen walked to the side of the bed and her eyes fluttered open.
“These herbs are making me sleep.” She covered a yawn with her hand.
“Odette”—he sat on the stool beside her—“did you shoot at me yesterday?”
After a moment of staring up at him and blinking, she shook her head. “I would not shoot at you.”
“You were not in the forest yesterday morning?”
“In the morning? Do you mean, after the sun was up?”
“Yes.”
“I never hunt in the daytime. I went to Rutger’s warehouse to confront him, then I was sleeping in my bed the rest of the morning.”
“Someone shot at me.”
“Were you hurt?” Her brow creased.
“The arrow only grazed the top of my shoulder.”
“I have no idea who that might have been. But it does prove that someone is trying to harm you.”
“Perhaps.”
“Is that why you shot me? Because you thought I shot at you?”
“Not you, but I did think the poacher may have been trying to kill me.”
“But you wanted only to wound me?”