by Lynn Kurland
And then he simply held her.
She wondered if she would ever manage to release him.
“Forgive me,” she croaked, finally.
“Nay, Mary,” he said, so quietly she could scarce hear him over the endless roar of the sea. “This is my fault.”
She looked up at him, dragging her sleeve across her eyes before she could see him.
His eyes were full of tears.
She attempted a smile, but failed miserably. “Your arrogance is astonishing,” she said with as much bluster as possible. “Surely you can’t imagine I’m weeping over you.”
He didn’t smile in return. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He simply looked at her for so long, she wondered if he actually believed her lie.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
Mary clung to him as her world began to spin. She closed her eyes because she simply wasn’t capable of keeping them open any longer.
It was no wonder her uncle Nicholas was forever pulling his wife into darkened corners and kissing her senseless. She understood now why his wife always looked none too steady on her feet after the kissing had ended.
Zachary was very good at it, though she was the first to admit she had nothing to compare him to. She supposed it wouldn’t have mattered. The moment he’d touched her lips with his, she had been completely lost.
He kept at his goodly labor until she thought she might quite like to find somewhere to sit down. He tore his mouth away from hers finally and buried his face in her hair. Mary found that her breathing was very ragged indeed, but it seemed to match his quite well.
He eventually pulled back and looked down at her. His eyes were very red. “Let’s walk,” he said roughly. “Before Jackson decides to kill me truly this time.”
Mary looked over her shoulder. Jackson was indeed watching them, but his expression was one, surprisingly, of pity. The rest of the lads were finding other things to look at.
She felt Zachary take her hand and tug her along with him further away from her cousins. She watched him drag his sleeve across his eyes, then look at her. She could only return his look, mute. He smiled very faintly, then released her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. He caught her free hand and pulled it around his waist, under his cloak. She walked down the strand with him as she had seen her father and mother do countless times and wished the day would either end right then or go on forever.
She finally spoke. “Zachary?”
“Aye, love?”
She swallowed her pride—and it was a great deal more difficult than she’d imagined it might be—and said the words that burned in her mouth. “Please stay.”
He flinched as if she had struck him. He stopped and turned toward her. The anguish in his face was, she was certain, the same that he no doubt saw in hers. He closed his eyes and pulled her into his embrace. He held her for so long in silence, she thought he would never speak. She wouldn’t have been unhappy had he chosen not to, for she knew already what he would say.
He finally sighed deeply and pulled back far enough to look at her, though he didn’t release her.
“I wish,” he said very quietly, “that I could.”
“I don’t care about titles and gold.”
He smiled, but there was absolutely no humor in it. “I don’t either, actually, but in the Year of Our Lord’s Grace 1258, sweetheart, it means more than either of us wants.” He reached up and smoothed her hair back from her face. “How am I to make a life for you here, Maryanne? Am I to carry you off to my hovel in the village? Will you sleep with both me and the chickens and swine and whatever else we need to shelter during the winter—if we’re fortunate enough to be able to afford all those animals to start with? Will you spend the rest of your days scrabbling over our plot of ground that’s no bigger than your father’s solar while I go till the lord’s? Or are we to live forever on your father’s charity?”
“I’ve heard worse ideas,” she said grimly.
“So have I, but that doesn’t change the reality.” He paused. “Would you trade your horses for this life of luxury I could provide for you?”
“Aye,” she said simply.
He groaned, then pulled her close and held her so tightly, she thought she might never take a decent breath again.
“I love you,” he whispered harshly against her ear. “I love you, Maryanne de Piaget, and because I love you, after I break your betrothal, I will go home. Because you deserve better than what I can give you here.” He took a pair of very deep breaths. “Because I have to go home or risk setting in motion things that will ruin more lives than just ours.”
“What things?”
“If I told you, you would think I’d lost all my wits.” He paused for quite a long time. “I honestly don’t think I could stand to see that look on your face.”
She wanted to protest. She was, as it happened, very good at protesting. But she knew, in a way that made her feel quite ill, that there was no point in arguing. Whatever else he might have been talking about, he had one thing aright. It wasn’t just her happiness she had to think on, it was her children‘s, her parents’, Zachary’s. She would, if she wed him, be forced to choose between love and duty, which would leave her very poor indeed.
Though she suspected she would have walked away from all her gold if Zachary had been willing to wed her.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she stood there in his arms. She wasn’t sure if he wept or she did. She only knew that she would never again in her life feel such pain or such sublime comfort. She would never forget how his hands felt on her hair, on her face, on her back holding her close. She would never forget how he lifted her face to kiss her, how he told her she was beautiful, how she felt when he said he would never again draw a decent breath without her.
And she would never forget how her heart felt as it broke.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered finally against her ear, “we have to go back. A storm is blowing in.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care.”
He held her even more tightly. “I don’t, either, but I think you will when you don’t have the energy to dance tonight.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “Are we dancing together tonight?”
“Every one,” he said seriously. “Every last bloody one.”
She took a deep breath. “Zachary—”
He kissed her again, then kissed her cheeks, along the line of her jaw, then her mouth again. Then he looked at her, his eyes very red. “Mary, my love, I’m so sorry.”
“Nay,” she said, attempting a smile, “don’t be. You are doing me a great service by ridding me of a man I don’t want. And nay, I’m not talking about you.”
“If there were a service I wanted to offer, it would be to offer myself as your constant companion for the rest of our days.” He hesitated, then looked at her bleakly. “I would give anything to have the chance to try to convince you that you wanted me.”
“There would be no labor involved,” she said quietly.
He gathered her close again. “Dance with me tonight, then let me do what I can for you in a pair of days. I won’t fail you.”
“I never thought you would.”
He took a step back, then reached for her hand and turned them back to where her cousins were waiting. She looked down at his fingers laced with hers, long, callused fingers that she’d watched do everything from make a horseshoe to draw things that were as beautiful as anything her uncle Jake could.
And she wished things could be different.
“Zachary?” she said as they grew closer to her cousins.
He only looked at her.
“I love you.”
He caught his breath, then stopped still. He turned her to him, then pulled her into his arms. He looked at her for a long moment, then bent his head and kissed her.
He kissed her for quite a while, truth be told.
“Oh, enough!” Jackson bellowed.
Zachary smiled against her
mouth. “I think we’ve pushed him as far as we’re going to today.”
“He’s been very patient.”
“I’m sure I’ll pay for it later.” He smiled gravely at her. “I love you.”
She found, to her surprise, that she believed him. And she believed that he thought that what he was doing was for the best.
She had believed what she’d said as well. She would have lived with him in a hovel, with the swine and the cows. She supposed she could have endured much for the pleasure of his arms around her at night.
She would have endured a great deal indeed.
Chapter 17
Z achary felt the sweat dripping down into his eyes, but he hardly dared wipe it away. He wasn’t in the forge where he might have set down his hammer and tongs and been confident that whatever pitiful thing he had under construction wouldn’t leap up and attack him. He was in Artane’s lists with their undisputed master, and he was painfully aware that the slightest slip in concentration would result in being used as a pincushion for Robin of Artane’s dullest blade. He didn’t want that, for a variety of reasons, the most pressing of which was that he had to somehow get Styrr to the lists the next morning, send him slinking off in shame, then keep Mary by his side until the day had passed and he knew she was safe.
Then he would go.
He leapt aside and avoided Robin’s blade only because he caught the glint of it out of the corner of his eye. Robin straightened, then opened his mouth—no doubt to swear quite inventively. Instead, he looked at Zachary in surprise.
“Are you ill?”
Zachary shook his head. “I’m fine, my lord.”
“You look green.”
“Shadows from the clouds.” Better that than admitting what his thoughts had been.
Robin studied him for a moment or two. “You know, it puzzles me greatly to watch you fight as well as you do, yet have you say nothing of where you’ve trained—or even whence you hail.”
“My lord, there are perhaps things that should remain shrouded in mystery.”
Robin grunted. “I daresay. Very well, lad, keep your secrets to yourself—I daresay we all do that in one fashion or another—and leave me to scratch my head until it pains me. I’ll survive it well enough. And I think you actually might survive your encounter with Styrr.”
Zachary took the opportunity to drag his sleeve across his eyes. “I can work harder, if need be.”
“For a woman you don’t want.”
“I never said I didn’t want her, my lord.”
Robin looked, for the first time, a little green himself. He studied a spot to Zachary’s right for quite some time before he spoke again.
“I was too hasty in this betrothal,” he said very grimly.
Zachary imagined just what it was costing Mary’s father to admit he’d been wrong, though in his defense, he’d had no reason to suspect Styrr of anything untoward. He remained silent, because there was nothing to say. Robin had obviously let a knee-jerk reaction send him down a path he regretted.
“Don’t do the same,” Robin advised. He looked at Zachary then. “When you have children of your own.”
Zachary returned his look. “My lord, we all make mistakes.”
“But we often don’t ask others to see to rectifying them.”
Zachary smiled, knowing exactly what he was getting at. “My lord, it is my pleasure to fight Styrr.”
Robin started to speak, then shook his head. “I imagine it is, and I think I can guess the reason. But I’ll say no more, lest I say too much. Let’s have ourselves a drink, then we’ll be back to our business.”
Zachary nodded, then followed him over to where Connor’s younger brothers stood guarding several bottles of wine. Robin drank, then looked at Theo.
“Any tidings?”
“If they would be useful to you, Uncle,” Theo said deferentially, “I understand there was a messenger come for Lord Styrr this morning. We haven’t divined his identity, but when we’re at liberty to do so, we will of course seek out the particulars and give them to you without delay.”
Robin looked at Zachary. “I think I’ve been misusing their gifts.”
“They do have a knack for a certain kind of thing,” Zachary agreed. He would have been happy to try to sell Robin further on the benefits of having two such terrifying informants, but he was distracted by Connor sprinting across the lists toward them.
A chill went down Zachary’s spine.
Apparently the same sort of thing was giving Robin the shivers. He turned on Connor with almost a snarl.
“What is it?”
Connor’s chest was heaving. “We cannot find Mary.”
Zachary felt as if he’d just been slugged in the gut. He had to lean over to catch his breath.
“Where have you looked?” Robin demanded.
“The stables, the hall—”
Robin cursed fluently. He looked at Connor. “Go down to the gate and make certain Styrr doesn’t flee with her. We’ll spread out and start from the inner bailey gate. Where are the rest of the lads?”
“Running about madly.”
“I’ll see to organizing them,” Robin said curtly. “Twins, come with me. Make haste, lads.”
Zachary straightened and watched them all bolt toward the road, then reached out and took hold of Connor’s arm before he could follow them. “Who was supposed to look after Mary?”
“Parsival,” Connor said helplessly, “and he had no intentions of letting her out of his sight. She wanted to go to the kitchens to look for something to take to Rex. He followed her to the hall, then paused to attend to something to save my uncle the trouble. When he went to look for her, she wasn’t where she said she would be. He found me, we looked for her briefly, then decided we would need aid.”
“Did you see the messenger who came for Styrr?”
“Aye, he’s from ...” Connor looked at Zachary in horror. “He’s from Meltham.”
“Damn it,” Zachary said, dragging his hand through his hair.
“You don’t think—”
“That he’s pushed Styrr into doing something rash?” Zachary asked. “Without a doubt. Let’s go find them.”
Connor ran with him back across the lists. Zachary stopped at the edge of the cobblestone path and looked over the inner bailey, wondering where Styrr might be and what it was that had possessed Mary to ditch her keeper. The only thing that eased him at all was knowing that it was a day too early to begin worrying. Unless his being in the past had somehow changed things in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
“Connor,” he said quickly as Connor was starting toward the gate, “stop. What’s the date?”
Connor turned. “What does that mean?”
Zachary shook his head impatiently. “I want the date. It’s the eleventh, isn’t it?”
Connor looked at him in surprise. “Have you gone daft, Zachary, or can you not count? ’Tis the twelfth!”
Zachary staggered. He felt as if he’d just been kicked in the gut, this time by a horse. “But Godric said his cousin is coming on the sixteenth,” he managed. “In five day’s time.”
“The man is a very fine maker of blades, but you should never trust him with numbers,” Connor warned. “Why does any of that matter?”
“It doesn’t,” Zachary said hoarsely. And it didn’t. The future was hard on him and he had no choice but to try to outwit it. “You’d better go to the gates. I’ll start looking here.”
Connor shot him a look of unease, then nodded and ran off. Zachary launched into a stumbling run in the direction of the stables, then an unwholesome thought occurred to him.
If Styrr had poisoned his brother, who was to say he wouldn’t try to poison anyone else—everyone else—who might get in his way? And unless he carried the stuff on him from habit, where would he go to get more? Zachary looked across the courtyard to the garden there. Next to it sat a little stone house that was reputedly the healer’s quarters. He bolted for it, then skidded to a halt twenty
paces from it. It made no sense to give away his location when he might possibly be able to overtake someone and stop them before they did the unthinkable. He kept himself out of sight of the open doorway, then flattened himself against the outside wall.
The conversation going on inside was unfortunately all too audible.
“I heard what that messenger said,” Mary was saying sharply.
“He said nothing,” Styrr dismissed with a snort. “Fanciful imaginings.”
“You’ve beggared your hall and your people until you’ve nothing left,” Mary pressed on. “And if you think I’ll give you a bloody shilling to pay for your idiocy, you’ve less wit than I feared.”
“You stupid—”
“Go grovel to your friends at court,” she spat, “and leave us alone.”
“Be silent!” Styrr thundered.
“Don’t touch me,” Mary said coldly. “If you do, I’ll make certain that every last one of Henry’s entourage knows what you’ve been combining here in the north. You won’t dare present yourself to the king’s lowliest page—”
Zachary had heard more than enough. He jerked the door open and strode into the house.
And then things took a turn he hadn’t planned for.
Styrr caught sight of him immediately. Perhaps he’d even been waiting for someone to find Mary and attempt a rescue of some sort. Before Zachary could yank her away, Styrr had grabbed her. Zachary expected a knife across her throat.
He hadn’t expected a vial of poison.
Styrr forced it between her lips before Zachary could shout out a warning. Fortunately for Mary, she was stronger than Styrr gave her credit for being. She spat out what he’d managed to get into her, then twisted like a furious cat, clawing Styrr across the face before he could do anything but let go of her. Zachary pulled her behind him, almost sending her sprawling in his haste. Or perhaps that could have been because she was tripping over Artane’s healer and the messenger from Meltham, who were both equally still.