Lady Betrayed

by Tamara Leigh

  With quaking hands, she tugged at her bodice, adjusted her skirts, paused on her abdomen. And felt Gabriel’s presence in his absence.

  “Wife!” Bernart shouted.

  Hoping he would not see her fear, Juliana hastened into the donjon.

  Gabriel gave no warning to Erec and their squires. With a sharp pull of the reins, he drew his destrier to a halt atop the hill and turned the beast.

  In the far distance, Tremoral’s towers pierced the morning mist veiling the castle. Within those walls, Juliana thought herself safe. But if he must return, she would discover he never made a vow he did not keep. And Bernart?

  His fury mounted as he recalled the honed sword nearly put through him. Bernart would not be spared the truth of his wife’s treachery—could drown in it for all Gabriel cared. It was something to look forward to. Something to fill the days and nights whose passing would tell if a child had been taken from him.

  “If so, there will be more than ransom to pay,” he rasped. “Keep watch for me, Juliana Kinthorpe.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Barony of Tremoral

  England, Early September 1195

  His dark looks reminded her of Gabriel. However, Father Hermanus was younger, light of heart, easily roused to laughter, eyes far from blue. If not that his vestments proclaimed him a member of the clergy, he could pass as one of the knightly class. Even Tremoral’s chaplain, a man who rarely smiled, was affected by the traveling priest who had arrived at the castle late in the afternoon and requested lodging for the night. If Father Daniel was not more mindful, he would succumb to the smile twitching his lips.

  Juliana turned her attention from the table where her guest sat amongst Tremoral’s men-at-arms and considered the embroidered linen in her lap. She ran a finger over the stitches worked these past nights. Though she had not begun it with the thought of fashioning it into an infant’s gown, there was little else it could be used for. It was so small.

  She looked to the fire before which she sat, laid a hand on the gentle swell that evidenced her nights with Gabriel. Four months pregnant, she had begun to show a fortnight past. It was then Bernart gathered his household knights and left for London and the court of the ever-absent King Richard.

  How he resented her giving him what he demanded of her. In the presence of others, his boasting of imminent fatherhood was almost without end, but when Juliana and he lay abed at night, his true feelings lunged across the space between them.

  What would it be like when the babe arrived? Would he loathe Gabriel's child born of her body as she had warned? Must she fear for its well-being?

  Laughter, out of place amid despair, reverberated through the hall. She looked around.

  The young priest’s head was flung back as he and the others enjoyed whatever mischief he imparted. And Father Daniel chuckled.

  Half absently, Juliana stroked her belly. Wholeheartedly, she prayed the babe was a boy. Not only would he be more in control of his life, but Bernart would be more accepting, though that did not mean he would be kind to Gabriel’s son. As Juliana fought to protect Alaiz, she might have to protect her little one—providing Gabriel did not return to take back what she had stolen.

  Despite the fire’s heat, it could not reach the chill in her breast that grew with each day of waiting for his return, knowing if the Lord did not intervene, the father of her child would make good his promise.

  Heavenly Father, she sent up another prayer, let Gabriel not risk all for a child he cannot possibly want. Keep him from Tremoral’s walls. Let not blood be shed over this babe.

  She drew a deep breath, opened her eyes, and found she had fallen beneath Father Hermanus's regard.

  The young priest inclined his head and glanced at her belly.

  As if it were a sin to touch her unborn child, she snatched her hand away and looked to Alaiz who lay with her head pillowed on the hearth and eyes closed.

  Why this sudden disquiet? Juliana wondered. She had nothing to fear from the priest. Though unlike any clergy previously encountered, he seemed kind and sincere. Rather than expect to be waited upon as did many visitors, he had assisted in preparing the evening meal. And at the urging of the chaplain he had said grace before supper. His impassioned words had moved Juliana as she had not been moved in a long time.

  Naught to fear, she assured herself. She was weary, that was all. She suppressed a yawn behind her hand. Darkness was not long upon Tremoral, yet she felt more fatigued than usual. It must be the babe.

  She laid the embroidery aside and stood. Though it was not usually difficult to rouse Alaiz from sleep, it was this eve.

  Her sister lifted heavy lids. “Juliana?”

  “We should go abovestairs.”

  Alaiz levered up, said thickly, “I am so tired. After our prayers, may I sleep with you again?”

  “Of course.” As Bernart had yet to send word as to how long he would remain in London, there could be no harm in it.

  Juliana assisted her sister to standing, turned to the tables, and bid all good eve. Their ascent of the stairs was slow with Alaiz leaning heavily on her sister.

  Was she ailing? Juliana wondered as they reached the landing. Though following the tournament it had become habit for them to pray together in the chapel before sleep, Juliana said, “Mayhap we ought to say our prayers alongside the bed.”

  Alaiz took some weight off her sister, stood a bit taller. “Nay, the chapel.”

  Juliana sighed. “Very well.”

  Alaiz did not long kneel before the altar, choosing instead to prostrate herself before it.

  Juliana joined her and resumed her prayers. Forgive this Tamar as Alaiz and Bernart believe I ought to be forgiven, she silently appealed. Bless this Tamar as you blessed the mother of King David’s ancestor. Ease Gabriel’s anger so revenge will not be the ruin of him. Let him do what is best for all.

  On and on she prayed until, drifting toward sleep, she ended with, Above all, protect this child from any who seek to harm him. Amen.

  She sat back on her knees. Fatigue swaying her, she looked to Alaiz’s face pressed to the floor. It was lax, mouth slightly open.

  She touched her sister’s back that rose and fell with the breath of sleep. “Let us go to bed.” No response, even when Juliana shook her shoulder.

  She stood and, weaving slightly, went to Alaiz’s chamber and retrieved a blanket. She returned to the chapel, covered her sister, and minutes later stumbled into the solar and dropped face down on the mattress.

  Voices.

  Wondering whence they issued and to whom they belonged, Juliana tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt as if weighted by stone.

  The voices drew nearer. Men’s voices, the words of which she could make no sense. Had Bernart returned?

  She tried to speak his name, but her tongue filled her mouth. She tried to turn toward the sound, but her body was as if one with the bed. What was wrong with her? Was it the babe?

  Anxiety quickened her breath. Seeking the swollen evidence of her child, she uncurled her fingers, but her arm would not lift from alongside her head. She whimpered.

  Large hands gripped her, turned her. “Do not fight it,” a voice rasped in her ear.

  Fear shuddered through her. It could not be him. Surely this was but another dream in which he returned to make good his threat to reclaim what was stolen from him. But unlike those other dreams, this time he came whilst the child was yet in her womb.

  “Where is your mantle?” he said, and the rushes rustled as he moved around the solar. Shortly, the warmth of wool settled over her and she was lifted from the mattress and settled against a firm chest.

  Breathing in the masculine scent pervading the weave of his tunic, she marveled at how real he seemed for a dream that would soon fly away, leaving her to face sleepless hours until dawn.

  Moments later, his stride carried them from the warmed chamber into the cool corridor.

  Then another voice, this one urgent and recognizable though she c
ould not say to whom it belonged. “She is not in her chamber.”

  “Search the—”

  Whatever the one who held her meant to say was left unspoken amid shouts that sounded as if a hue and cry were raised. Then she was carried downward at a run.

  Lulled by the beat of a strong heart beneath her ear, she drifted out of the dream and onto a winged horse that sped her through the dark night.

  Away from Tremoral. Away from Bernart. Away from Alaiz. Away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nausea.

  Juliana pressed a hand to her belly, wondered if the sickness that had plagued her first two months of pregnancy had returned.

  Knowing if she did not soon rise she would soil the bedclothes, she levered up. As she did so, she lurched sideways and threw out an arm to steady herself. But the bed continued to move beneath her.

  Thinking she must be quite ill to be so faint, she opened her eyes. It took several moments to focus, but finally she looked upon her surroundings. They were not as expected.

  As she moved her gaze from the pallet she lay on to the planked floor to the awning that enveloped her in shadow, she struggled to make sense of this place.

  Sounds beyond it reached her—the creak and groan of timber, the clank of metal on metal, the shout of men.

  She turned back the blanket. Though she expected to be clothed in only her chemise, she wore her bliaut. She had lain down without disrobing? She could not remember doing so.

  Cautiously, she gained her feet. And realized the swaying motion was not of her but of the floor. Was she on a boat? It did not seem possible, but when she drew back the awning’s flap, it became more than possible.

  A crisp salt breeze upon her face, the new-risen sun in her eyes, she squinted and looked across the deck to towering masts and billowing sails, running ropes and pulleys, rough-looking men laboring to keep the sails filled with air, the English coast to the west.

  As fear rolled through her, movement caught her eye. A man using naught but hands and feet scaled the great mast to a platform overhead. Just looking up made her head reel and stomach lurch.

  Heart racing, she lowered her gaze to the one who stood center and aft. Legs braced apart, arms akimbo, he barked orders to those who handled the steering oars.

  Mindful of her footing, Juliana stepped from beneath the awning and made her way over the deck. Though the slightest tilt threatened to upend her, she finally drew alongside the thickset man.

  “You are the captain?”

  “That I am, my lady.”

  “What is this ship’s destination?”

  “France. We put in at Bayeux come the morrow.”

  Bile moving up her throat, she swallowed hard. “How did I come to be aboard?”

  He jutted his chin toward the bow. “He can answer your questions better than I, my lady.”

  Past a group of men who worked the ropes mid-deck stood a lone figure alongside the starboard railing, his back to her.

  Juliana did not need to see his face to recognize him. There was only one with stature so great, shoulders so broad, vengeance so deep.

  Death could not be more frightening than the feeling that swept her. It was then she remembered the dream of the night past. Not a dream. As promised, Gabriel had come for his child.

  Grasping at her faith that had not been so shaken since Bernart demanded the unthinkable of her, she clenched her hands. She would not cry, would not scream, would not rail at the heavens.

  “My lady?”

  Was that concern in the captain’s voice? It mattered not. There was nothing he could do to help her.

  She stepped past him, negotiated the rolling deck, and halted behind Gabriel.

  Dark brown hair bound at the nape, the wind beating his tunic against his torso, he stared out to sea as if unaware he was no longer alone.

  She drew a deep breath. “What have you done, Gabriel?”

  He did not immediately turn, but when he did his eyes were bright with contempt. “What have I done? But kept a promise to return for what you stole from me.”

  It was all she could do to stop herself from curving an arm around her belly. “I have naught that belongs to you.”

  He looked to the modest swell beneath her gown. “You deny you are with child?”

  She could not. So how was she to turn him from his course? She could think of only one way. “’Tis true. I am three months with child.”

  His eyebrows soared. “Only three months?”

  She drew herself to her full height, pushed her shoulders back, raised her chin. “It is not your child.”

  As if accustomed to the deck of a ship, he smoothly stepped toward her.

  She would not back away. No matter how near he came, she would not move.

  He came near enough she had to tip her head back to hold his gaze, near enough the scent of him pressed upon her.

  “I am thinking you do not speak the truth, Juliana Kinthorpe. Three years of marriage and your womb lies empty, then you come to my bed and a child swells your belly?”

  She did not permit her gaze to waver. “It is my child. And Bernart’s.”

  “Nay, it is mine,” he said with such conviction it left her no hope. “And so it shall be proven when the child wails from your body five months hence.”

  As it was not likely God in His heavens would allow the babe to linger a month longer in her womb, Juliana’s despair deepened. “Do not do this, Gabriel. I beg you.”

  “’Tis done.”

  “Surely you know what you risk in stealing another man’s wife!”

  “I do.”

  “Then why?”

  “Why?” He put his face nearer hers. “You were missing from me, Juliana—rather, the child you carry.”

  If only she had never spoken those words! “Most severely you will be punished.”

  “Not by way of excommunication,” he scorned.

  That which his tourneying had already seen to, but there was more. “You could lose your lordship—your lands.”

  “A risk I am willing to take.”

  Such was revenge. It made fools of men and victims of their lessers—the latter of which Juliana knew too well. Had she not paid the price of Bernart’s revenge against Gabriel? Did she not continue to pay it?

  “When Bernart returns to Tremoral and discovers you have taken me, he will gather an army to come against you. Is that what you want?”

  His nostrils flared. “I want what belongs to me. And I will have it.”

  Knowing it would be futile to continue to assert the babe was not his, she demanded, “At the cost of bloodshed?”

  “Few but my brother know I took you from Tremoral. Thus, unless you confessed your sin to Bernart, I do not think he will look to me for you.”

  Was he right? What would Bernart think when he discovered her gone? Surely he would not believe she had left Tremoral of her own will.

  “Did you confess, Juliana?”

  To a sin Bernart knew better than she? She glared.

  “I thought not. Thus, no reason for him to seek you in France. He will believe you have run off.”

  “He knows I would never leave my sister—” Struck by the full implication of what Gabriel had done, she gasped. Alaiz was alone, none to shield her from Bernart.

  What is she feeling? she wondered. Does she think herself abandoned?

  Desperate to make Gabriel see reason, she touched his sleeve. “The last night I came to you, it was to ask you to leave Tremoral because I feared Bernart knew of us. Do you remember?”

  He looked from her face to her hand on him.

  She lowered it. “He will come.”

  As if a confrontation with Bernart was of little consequence, he shrugged. “Perhaps, but with the setting in of winter, it will likely be spring ere he appears at my gates. By then, the child will be born.”

  “And if you are wrong and he comes a fortnight hence?”

  “Then that much sooner he will know the truth of his wife and set
you aside as planned did you not provide him an heir.”

  The truth. How little Gabriel knew of it, but were she to tell him of the circumstances under which she had given herself to him, he would think it another lie. And even were she believed, to reveal Bernart’s secret would endanger Alaiz. Powerless again.

  Anger running through her, she silently cursed Gabriel and Bernart for pushing and pulling the levers of others’ lives.

  She drew breath through her teeth. “If the truth you seek, why did you steal upon Tremoral whilst my husband and his knights were gone? Why did you not face Bernart and make your accusations? Are you truly the coward he believes you to be?”

  The darkness of his pupils engulfed the blue. “I had my reasons.” As if to continue to look upon her might snap his last thread of control, he turned to the railing.

  Juliana stared at the corded muscles of his neck. Though she longed to return to the awning and close herself in, she tamped down her emotions as best she could. “When the child is born, what do you intend?”

  He made her wait long before coming back around. “If Bernart does not want you back, and it seems unlikely, you may enter a convent.”

  Tossed aside like a harlot. “And my babe?”

  “The child shall remain with me.”

  He meant to tear her newborn from her. Here was the man Juliana had disliked when he arrived at Tremoral four months past, the same whose touch and consideration had, for two nights, made her believe his heart was far from black.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  He delved her face. Then so swiftly she had no time to retreat, he pulled her against him. “Not when you are in my bed.”

  Memories of the dark nights spent with him pouring through her, she despised herself for the stir of emotions. “I will not lie with you again, Gabriel de Vere.”

  His eyes glittered. “I would not have you again, my lady.”

  He thought her foul. “Unhand me!”