“My father, Earl John, asked the lord of this castle of Kirkbybank for a space where we might meet discreetly,” she told everyone, aware that Earl John hoped Conrad and his parents would be reconciled without his involvement. Little chance of that, looking at these haughty faces. “He will be joining us soon.”
“Then we shall wait.” Speaking, Lady Galfrida spread her skirts, whether to indicate some kind of nobility or to encourage her husband to relinquish more room on the couch for her, Maggie could not tell. After a moment, Lady Galfrida addressed her directly, in French.
“I am English,” Maggie said steadily, aware of the implied insult to her by the woman, Conrad’s mother! She made no apology for not understanding the language of her supposed betters. “I cannot speak French.”
“As you said, Richard,” cried Lord Walter in Maggie’s native tongue. He might have added more, but leapt to his feet as the door creaked open.
“Ale, trenchers and cheese, good sirs?” asked a maid, wrestling platters in both arms. Conrad strode over to help her prop open the door, Maggie moved to drag a flat-topped chest into the middle of the chamber.
“Thank you, they can go here,” she said, after flicking the dust from the chest with the edge of one of her cloaks. Lady Galfrida pulled a face and put her sleeve over her mouth at her uncouth action while Lord Walter dropped back onto the couch.
“Who are you, pretty?” Richard approached the maid with what Maggie was sure he thought a winning smile.
“Sun-Sunniva, sir,” stammered the maid, blushing from the crown of her head to her prominent collarbones. The platters balanced on her arms wobbled, and Maggie quickly placed the most listing dishes onto the chest.
“A worthy name. I have a comb that would match and adorn your nut-brown hair—”
“Let the lass do her work in peace, Richard.”
“Always the protector, eh, little brother? I suppose you cannot charm any other way?”
“Gentlemen.” Maggie planted the final dish on the chest with more force than needed, and stood between the glaring siblings.
A yelp from the maid had Maggie glaring at Lord Walter. In view of his wife’s closed expression, she suspected the man had pinched the young woman’s bottom.
“Thank you,” Maggie told her again and escorted her to the door.
“You should not bully the servants,” Conrad said, the instant the chamber door was closed.
“You were always a joyless beast,” grumbled his father. “The maids make no complaint of me.”
Because they do not dare. Maggie’s thought echoed what Conrad said, in a heavy growl, while his mother helped herself to a trencher, cheese, a few rare dates, and a cup of ale. Lady Galfrida says nothing because she does not care, and father and elder son would ignore her anyway.
On that bleak realization, she glanced at Conrad. His face remained dark with anger, his right hand gripping the lower carved edge of a narrow arrow slot as if he wanted to crush the stone.
Lord Walter jerked a hand at Maggie, as if to demand she serve him, and then added fat to Conrad’s brooding temper. “You embarrass me.”
“And you shame me—you and Richard both—so we are quit,” Conrad snapped.
Lady Galfrida raised her eyes from her trencher. “How can you say that?” she asked, in seeming bewilderment, while Richard smirked and seized the jug of ale.
Before he could utter whatever foul thing he had in his mind or smash the pitcher over his brother’s head, Maggie said calmly, “Someone new comes, in heavy clothes.”
At once, Richard shut his mouth and smoothly poured two cups for himself and his father. Conrad cocked his head, listening, and nodded to her.
“You have sharp ears,” he said.
To rescue you from battling your odious kindred, she thought, but simply shrugged.
“So unladylike,” commented Lady Galfrida, her pursed lips blooming into a smile when Lady Petronilla trip-trapped into the chamber on her fancy pointed shoes, followed by her ladies. Her chestnut hair was pinned and braided with silver pins, her blue gown shone like a summer sky, and she knew she was beautiful. “My dear! How delightful to see you!”
“And you, my lady.” Petronilla’s smile sharpened. “Did that idle maid leave you that old chest on which to serve your food?”
“I did.” Maggie broke in so as to avoid any trouble for the hapless Sunniva.
“Well, I am not surprised.” The silver pins in her hair flashed like blades as Petronilla jerked her head. “The one as useless as the other. The key is lost. No one has been able to open that thing for years.”
“I would have thought a smile or frown from you, my lady, would suffice,” drawled Richard.
Maggie quelled a sigh. It was going to be a long evening.
• ♥ •
Later, Earl John appeared and whisked his daughter off to his wagon with no more than terse nods to the others, a brief, urgent whisper to him from Conrad, but no word yet as to Maggie’s brother, Michael. Lady Petronilla and her ladies departed soon after, and Conrad braced himself.
Predictably, his mother started. “You can do much better.”
“Lady Petronilla is charming,” added his father.
“Then Richard can marry her,” said Conrad flatly. His head ached with all the useless chatter tonight. He wanted to be with his wife, snug in bed.
“Why so hostile to an annulment, my good man?” Lord Walter continued, pouring himself yet another cup of ale. “I doubt that the earl will continue his interest in his bastard.”
He broke off with a sudden choke as he found Conrad’s dagger at his throat.
“Stop that!” scolded his mother, as if her own husband had said nothing insulting.
“I note she has no wedding ring, only that queer piece of twine.” Richard lounged by the arrow slot that Conrad had earlier stood by to breathe in some fresher air. Watching the torch light flickering over his brother’s wavy curls, Conrad felt the old disgust.
“A band I made for her,” he replied. He did not add it was with Maggie’s own hair, this family would never understand.
“She has yet to pup, so no difficulties here,” Lord Walter said.
The old man has still not learned his lesson. Conrad’s ears seemed to ring, he was so blindingly furious.
“Lady Petronilla is suitable and an heiress.” Once his mother fixed on a point she was like a dog with a piece of meat, worrying at it constantly. “I am sure her father Lord Rufus will approve—”
Conrad flung himself out of the chamber, sprinting for the cleaner air of the battlements. It was that, or murder his parents.
• ♥ •
Farther along the corridor, Maggie crouched in the shadows and told herself that listeners never hear well of themselves. I should have stayed with Earl John and not returned alone to bid Conrad goodnight.
Yet, Richard, the vile, bullying man, had the right of it. She still did not wear any golden wedding ring from Conrad. Her eyes misting, she touched her home-made band. Did it mean nothing? If, as Conrad’s own father said, Earl John did not truly care for her, what then?
Can Conrad resist the demands of his parents and his class for me?
Feeling older and greyer than Lady Galfrida, Maggie tottered back to the stairs. She did not think she could hurry, but it would be a mercy if she could reach Earl John’s wagon and pretend to be asleep before Conrad appeared.
What am I going to do tomorrow, and the day after, and the days after that?
Trembling, she forced herself to keep going, but by the following morning, she had not slept, and Conrad had not joined her in the wagon.
Is my marriage real?
Chapter 20
Where was Conrad?
In search of her husband, Maggie became vividly aware of how isolated she was. She knew none of Conrad’s men except Sir David, who was also missing, presumably with his lord. She had no maid or ladies. Her brother was perhaps in Beverley, perhaps on the road to Kirkbybank, but assuredly not wit
h her. Earl John, when he chose to act the part of her father, was affectionate, but remained fundamentally distant, as if a tower of glass surrounded him.
He had slept outside the wagon last night, allowing Maggie the couch, but there was no trace of him now, nor of that fancy cousin of his.
Thinking on it, I have not seen Lord Gerald for a day or so.
But what, in the end, did that matter?
She was alone, as orphaned as she had been at Little Yeaton, and in some ways worse, for she had been known and respected for her artist’s skills in the village. Michael had been there, too.
Retracing her steps to the battlements where she and Conrad had stood, Maggie looked out over the snowy landscape and the bedraggled tents and stalls of the winter fair. It was early yet, just after dawn, and only a few traders had set up again for the day. Longing to see a familiar tall, dark figure, stark against the snow, Maggie lifted her eyes to scan farther.
A distant glitter of water revealed the beck of Kirkbybank and coils of smoke from the settlement beside the ford. “Smiths and metal-workers,” Conrad had told her, though she doubted they would be firing their furnaces during the fair.
She followed a small coracle, drifting in the beck, and started. Beyond the water, in rising plumes of snow, rode a column of men. She prayed, wildly that it was Conrad, and ran, skidding dangerously in her haste, to the top of the stairs.
Maggie reached the bailey courtyard at the same time as Lord Rufus, Lady Petronilla and Lady Galfrida, who all ignored her to stare at the leader of the troop, a man with red-gold hair and a black horse.
Lord Gerald, and not my husband. Disappointed, Maggie forced her weary body to straighten, hoping now for news of Michael. Impatient for any clue as to her brother, she ran her gaze along the riders—
There! Seated behind a man with long black hair and a streak of grey by his temple—Theobald of High Yeaton, her memory supplied—was her younger brother Michael, hale and whole.
He looked as dark and lean and intense as before, but she wondered, when he dismounted, if he were now a little taller than herself. He looks to have thrived in Beverley. He is growing up.
Overwhelmed in relief, Maggie sank to her knees in the snow, tears bursting from her eyes. Around her, she faintly heard Petronilla scoff and Conrad’s mother sniff, but she did not care. She was fixed on her brother, watching his place in the column until the whole troop swept into the stables and disappeared behind its wooden walls.
“A thrilling entrance,” Lady Galfrida pronounced. She said more, but Maggie no longer listened. She hastily mopped her face, rose up by means of a castle wall, and waited, her heart hammering and her breathing loud in her ears. Any instant and Michael will walk over to me.
A flash of movement from the stable and a tall man with tarnished bronze hair stepped from its shelter. What was Richard doing? Or rather what has he done?
Fear hit her, hard as a punch. If Richard had told Michael anything, however outrageous, her brother would readily believe it. He never tells falsehoods and so does not consider that any would lie to him. It is not part of his world.
Now, Michael pushed past Richard. Throwing off Theobald’s steadying arm, he raced straight at her, his slight limp hardly in evidence in his haste. He was already shouting, but her brother’s words were not those of welcome or reunion.
“You shame me, Mag! Slutting with a knight and making me the butt of every jest! How could you? Why are you here?”
Each word struck her like a fist. Michael glared as if she was disgusting, a foul creature—and nothing to him. I am married, she wanted to answer. I spoke the words before a priest and God… But her brother lunged closer, piling on his ruinous accusations.
“You let the outlaws take me and did nothing!”
This snarling, taller stranger was her younger sibling, who she had given her blanket to in the winters, so that he kept warm.
“I am here to look for you!” she protested, stung and hurt by his injustice.
“Yes, with your lover—and where is he? Tired of you already, sister?”
How can you be so unkind? Maggie wanted to say, but his harsh accusations mirrored her fears and she was no longer sure of her place in Conrad’s life.
“What can you expect, Mag, rutting like a bitch in heat—”
He was as absolute in his certainty as a demon, with none of God’s mercy. She held out her hands. “Please, Michael, listen to me.”
“No and no. A thousand times no!”
Spit formed in the corners of Michael’s mouth as he raved, red-faced and uncaring who heard him. Off to one side, Lord Rufus seemed embarrassed, but Richard chatted to ladies Petronilla and Galfrida and watched with an expression of deepest joy, the gleam of a man who considers his revenge complete.
Maggie took a step forward and did what she had not done for years. She slapped her brother.
Not hard, and not on his face or head, but on his arm. Still, her sudden move shocked Michael and that was enough. She moved off in the sudden still silence, out toward the pristine white.
Peace, she thought. I will have peace. She bundled her cloak more tightly about her body and kept going. Where she was headed, she had no notion…and did not care.
Michael had rejected her. Conrad was no longer here. She was alone.
She walked out into the snow, and no one stopped her.
• ♥ •
The falling snow, lighter than spiders’ webs, softer and warmer than silk, hid her. She travelled in a maze of silver, later ruby, and guessed she faced the setting sun.
“Where are you going?” asked Elfrida the witch, walking in the murk beside her.
“To find Conrad. To warn him,” Maggie panted. She was no longer hungry, nor thirsty, but she was tired. Soon I can lie down and sleep.
“He loves you, dear one. I am certain.”
Maggie, too polite to mention the lack of golden ring that Elfrida had promised would be hers, nodded in agreement. Conrad did love her, but he could not fight his family or class forever. She plodded on.
“Richard worked against you both.”
“Give yourself a holiday from witch-craft, Elfrida,” Maggie replied. “Do not waste effort trying to make me angry. I have accepted that Conrad cannot stay wed to me, but Petronilla will not make him happy. She is too loud.”
“He loves you, not her.”
“I am not fleeing,” Maggie explained painstakingly, after a long silence. “I am looking for Conrad. To warn him,” she said again.
A silvered bed rose out of a sparkling drift of frost and ice. Maggie, her legs hurting, her heart sore, turned aside from the tempting sight.
Soon I shall find Conrad and then I can sleep.
“Mag—gie!”
A voice, hoarse with shouting, blunt with desperation, yowled her name in two-tone note.
“Mag—gie!”
It came again, rising and falling, hopeful and begging. Maggie lifted her head and turned, rolled toward the sound.
“Thank Christ!”
Hands hotter than liquid metal lifted her. Dark, grey eyes scorched along her body.
“Let’s get you warm, my icicle.”
Those liquid fingers melted the ice shackles around her, folded wool and silk and fur about her. There was a skid of cold air, a launching, and she was aloft, cradled in her husband’s arms. Maggie opened her mouth to warn Conrad and found his lips covering her own, pumping breath and sweetness into her.
“Come on, my heart, be back with me. Be safe with me.”
Tears, burning like a candle flare, fell from his eyes onto her cheeks. In his naked weeping, there was no shame for her to admit the truth. “Love you.”
She was held more tightly, lodged in the crook of his shoulder, her head against his chest and her body pinned to his flank. It was how they were in bed at night.
Conrad’s words were new. They were everything, and they were still bursting from him.
“I worship you, you daft lass! I have been
wild, tracking you, my silly little wife, my one and only.”
Conrad braced himself against a tree to clumsily mop his streaming eyes and then hers. His thumb trembled on her eyelids.
“No more of this, Maggie. We stay together.”
“You were gone last night,” she whispered, through the chattering of her teeth. She felt herself lifted higher into the embrace as Conrad cradled her still more closely.
“I told your father to give you a message last night that I was at the goldsmith’s camp by the river ford.”
Maggie recalled Conrad standing beside Earl John after her disastrous meeting with his parents, could clearly picture how brooding and grim her husband had looked, how he had actually shaken the shorter man’s shoulder at one point to impress whatever point he was making.
While she remembered, Conrad’s lean features grew more haggard. “He did not say? No word or hint? The fool! The arrogant, careless, strutting idiot! He will meet my challenge for combat and satisfaction or be known as oath-breaker through Christendom! He promised me he would tell you! That same night, before bed—”
He broke off and she felt a wave of heat pass through him as he shuddered. The glow in his face and eyes was brighter than the sunset.
“I am sorry, Maggie, so sorry.”
Maggie shifted in his arms and kissed his shoulder in forgiveness. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax under her husband’s protective fury. There would be time enough tomorrow to hear Earl John’s many apologies and broker a truce between her father and her mate.
There is also the matter of Conrad’s visit to the goldsmith’s to consider.
She prized open her eyes again to find Conrad anxiously watching. “Mmm?”
It was hardly a question but he somehow understood. “Can I show you now?” he asked. “I wanted to do more, offer it with more ceremony so all would know.”
“Con?”
The first time she had shortened his name, but clearly, he took heart from that, for he spiralled them both down beside a sheltering holly bush, settling her comfortably on his lap.
He took her hand in his and warmed it more, before touching her hair plait ring. “I like this—”
Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure Page 11