The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  "What can I say," Rowena replied. "Sir John is my lord husband's choice for you."

  "Oh, don’t be so shy of my compliments," the bride responded with a little laugh. "It may have been Rannulf's idea, but no doubt you rejoiced at his choice of man, sister."

  Just then, there was a knock at the door and the bridegroom begged for the right to enter. The maids moved behind Lady Maeve while Rowena came to stand at her side, as befitted the coming ceremony. Maeve eased to the side, putting her lips close to Rowena’s ear.

  "My spies tell me how dearly you pay for crossing me. Your husband despises you and in his hate, he finally turns to me for comfort." Harsh words they were, but filled with triumph.

  Shock tore through Rowena. She reared back from the bride. "You lie," she cried.

  Maeve only smiled. "Do I?" she whispered again, keeping her words so low that not even the nearest maid could overhear them. "Nay, I think your husband has only deluded you so well that you cannot see the truth. Think on it. Ashby is so close, and John is such a fool. Your husband is mine, my fine lady, and you, yourself, drove him into my arms. He intends to be my lover and make a mockery of your marriage. This," the triumph in her gaze grew, "will humble you far better than any of the plots I savored these past months. Your downfall will be sweet, indeed."

  "You lie," Rowena retorted, but this time with less certainty as across the room the door flew open and John stepped in with Rannulf following at his heels.

  "Time will tell," Maeve hissed, then stepped forward, her blanket dropping to the floor. "Come, husband," she fairly simpered, her expression without a hint of her previous emotion, "come to our bed this night."

  Rowena put an end to the ceremony as quickly as she could without insulting John, then returned to the hall. The servants returned to their dancing. She looked for her husband, but he had disappeared. Where? To make arrangements for a tryst?

  Rowena stood stock-still amid the noise and confusion, torn asunder. Lord John's name had come so quickly to her husband's lips. It was a certainty that Lady Maeve believed it; here was why she’d so happily agreed to this marriage. A servant appeared at Rowena’s elbow and offered her a cup of wine. Rowena took it and drank deeply to steady her nerves. She had nearly drained it to the dregs when her husband startled her by speaking from directly behind her.

  "Did I not tell you she’d do as I said?" His tone was patronizing and filled with pleasure.

  Why wouldn’t he be pleased? His arrangements were working out so nicely. Her insides turned to ice. She turned to face the man she’d wed.

  "Oh, aye, Maeve has done it. At first, I couldn’t understand why she was so cheerful over it, but now I know for she has told me. You and she are to be lovers."

  All pleasure drained from her husband’s face, his features freezing into a dark and dangerous expression. "What did she ever do to you that you should hate her so? Now, you’ll hold that vicious tongue of yours, or I’ll publicly name you liar."

  "Don’t rush to spew denials, dear husband," Rowena's voice was even, but inwardly she reeled. "How foolish of me to expect it. You call me a liar, yet I have never lied to you. When she steals from you, you find her a husband and gift her with a substantial dowry." She continued with a calmness that belied what roiled in her. "You were so determined to bring her back here, even when we told you what she'd done. It was only Gilliam's threat to leave that caused you to relent. And, I in my selfish desire to be rid of her, I didn’t think to question your swift turnabout."

  The lord of Graistan’s eyes were cold as ice. "You dishonor me with your presence," he said, his words edged in steel.

  "Do I?" Rowena shot back. "How strange that sounds coming from you, but I haven’t finished with you yet." Rowena cringed, for her voice had taken on a desperate edge. She fought to suppress it. It wouldn’t do for him to see how much his betrayal hurt her. "The least you could have done was to keep your adulterous intentions private, but every soul, including poor Sir John, saw that greeting you gave her."

  "No further, madam." Her husband’s face was now a bitter mask. "You'll not treat me so. Behave yourself or I’ll confine you with your women."

  Behave herself?! Rowena snarled as hurt gave way to barely controlled rage. "I’m treating you only as well as you treat me," she hissed, "and if you don’t like it, choke on it. But, I won't stand idly by while the two of you humiliate me before my servants. You better reconsider, or you'll learn quickly enough where the power lies at Graistan. So it's common now to manage one's hall, is it? Well, if you liked her moldy bread so well, I'll see to it that is what you eat!"

  Lord Rannulf’s mouth took that vicious twist. "Hold your tongue, woman," he started, his voice growing steadily in volume. "Quit your lunatic ravings and be gone with you!" His final words were a thunderous roar.

  Everyone came to a sudden halt, the music dying away into a shrill shriek. Servants whirled to stare. The dicing soldiers came to their feet to see what was what.

  Rowena didn’t care. "Gladly!" she shouted back. "But it’s I who am done with you. You want my inheritance, well go fetch it from my sister. As for locking me away I won’t give you the opportunity. From now on, I make my bed with my women, and you can find your pleasure with any whore you choose, except that one."

  With that, she whirled and ran, not caring what direction she went, only wanting to be away from him. As she reached the screens that guarded the outer door, his cup crashed to the floor at her heels.

  "Go, then," he bellowed. "I have had enough of you to last me a lifetime."

  Rowena ran outside and down the stairs. It was by instinct alone she found her way to her garden's gate. Here, she leaned against that door, her breath coming in huge, tearless sobs. "God forgive me," she cried out to herself, "but I hate him."

  "God forgives you your lie and so do I."

  "Temric!" she cried out, leaping away from him in fright.

  "My pardon, I did not mean to startle you." He opened the gate. "Why not come sit for a moment and settle your senses. You seem overwrought," he added dryly.

  Rowena laughed, but the sound was nearer a sob. She hurried within her garden's shielding walls to pace the sole path. The morning’s rain had blown over around noon, leaving nothing behind it but damp gravel and the fresh smell of a world washed clean of filth. Her brother-by-marriage leaned casually against a tree trunk. It was only the enclosing privacy of darkness that finally loosened her tongue. She let fly the harangue she'd so long suppressed.

  "I’ve kept his home, seen to his table, denied him nothing, and what does he do? Not only does he treat me as if I were the least of his servants whose only value to him is in my inheritance, he plans to betray me with Maeve. What have I done that he should so deeply hate me? Why must it be with her?" Her voice broke in a breathless cry and she stopped, her hand pressed to her lips to still her pain.

  "Betray you with his ward?" Temric's surprise filled the air around them. "What do you mean?"

  Rowena whirled, her heels scratching deep marks in the fine stones covering this path. "Maeve told me that my husband has arranged her marriage to Sir John so the two of them could be lovers."

  "And you believed her?" he retorted. "After all she's done, you believed her? Surely, when you told this to Rannulf, he set you straight."

  "Nay," she cried out in wild hurt, "he protected her. He threatened to name me a liar when I repeated what she'd said."

  Temric shook his head. "Listen now and make no mistake on what you hear. Rannulf could no more do what you accuse than he could fly. Whether or not he will stray from his marriage vows I cannot say, but my brother would die before he dishonored his vassal by lying with that man's wife." His voice was as deep and soft as the night around them. The very tone of it made his words unassailable truth.

  "Am I to believe you when he wouldn’t deny it?" All the same Rowena held her breath waiting for his answer.

  "What you believe is up to you. I can tell you what I know and let you make what use
of it you will. I know Rannulf better than any man alive and I tell you now, he is not capable of what you accuse."

  Rowena paused as the rightness of what he said filled her. Only then did she realize the enormity of what she'd just done. Like the angel with the fiery sword who'd banished Adam and Eve from Paradise her burning words had irrevocably driven her husband away from her. She sat on the bench as rage and hurt gave way to despair. "How could I have been so blind to her trap? Sweet Mary. I’ve destroyed my marriage over her, just as she desired."

  "Well, I don’t doubt you shocked my brother with your accusations, but it does him no harm to find you can be driven to a jealous rage over him." Temric stated this so matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing at all.

  "Not jealousy," Rowena sighed, "but fear of humiliation drove me to accuse him. Oh Temric, tell me something, anything, that can be done to ease this accursed match of ours. I cannot spend my life surrounded by so much hate. What is it about me? I need only speak two words to send him raging. Whatever you suggest, I swear I’ll do it, although now I fear it may be too late."

  "Accursed." Graistan’s bastard managed to make that single word ring with ironic amusement. "Now there's an accurate description for this trap into which we shoved you. Your union will continue to be troubled until Rannulf can see himself free of his past. That I cannot change. But why did you cease to try?"

  "Cease to try?" she cried out. "What is there left to do that I haven’t already done, all of it wrong. I’ve even accused him of adultery."

  "That may be the only thing you've done right so far. Now, tell me what you’ve done save let him belittle you and treat you as if you didn’t exist? Three nights ago he spoke to you with unforgivable rudeness, and you let him do so unchallenged. I took you to be a different woman. Was I wrong?"

  Rowena gave a harried sigh and hugged herself. "If I cannot have the man, I won’t lose the hall," she breathed.

  "There's a particularly odd turn of logic. Do you think you secure yourself here by allowing him to treat you without the respect due to your position?"

  She shook her head in frustration. "You’re right, I do know better. But, Temric, his anger comes exploding out at me from deep inside him. Dear God, I couldn’t live with the shame if he were to beat me before my own servants." Her last words were almost a sob.

  "Nay, this again is something you need never fear from Rannulf."

  "You might be right if it were anyone other than me at whom his anger is directed. When I should remain calm to soothe him, he says the one thing that drives away all my common sense and control. I find myself goading him, although I cannot explain why I do it. I thought if I were silent, he would come to care for me, so, I gritted my teeth and humbled myself. Aye"—the word sprang from her in enraged anguish—"I’ve borne it all while it ate my stomach through to my spine. I don’t know who I hate worse for it, him or me."

  "It hasn’t been all silence." His calm, certain tone told her he knew they shared their bed as man and wife.

  "Ilsa talks too much," Rowena said darkly.

  "I don’t need old women to tell me what I can see in my brother's eyes."

  "If that is what I must do to keep my home," her voice died away into the night.

  "Now you are truly lying." There was quiet amusement in Temric’s voice.

  "Let me," Rowena snapped back. "It doesn’t hurt as much if I say it so."

  There was a long, quiet moment broken only by the echo of music from the hall and the rustle of wild creatures moving within the garden. In that time, the moon lifted above the wall. Its pure light made silvery tracework from branch and bough.

  Temric sighed, and she studied him. His harshness was gone or at least hidden for the soft illumination revealed only sadness.

  "I would have warned you, but I was loath to interfere in my brother's life. There'll be no peace for you here, at least not of the kind you knew at your convent. How you must regret what you’ve lost."

  Rowena hesitated to answer, for, oddly enough, what she could never have found in the Church she'd discovered here. "Nay, I have no regrets." Then, suddenly, she straightened. "Do you say that my lord intends to send me back? Then you may tell him that I’ll fight him with every ounce of my strength. If I must stay locked in with my women for the remainder of my life, I'll not leave Graistan."

  Temric's chuckle rumbled deep within his chest. "To the best of my knowledge Rannulf has no such intentions. My brother needs your pride and your arrogance, not the quiet nothing you have shown him. If you’d been a biddable child, he wouldn’t have married you."

  "In that you’re wrong," Rowena returned with firm certainty. "My father forced him to fulfill their contract. He accepted me only to avoid losing my inheritance."

  "And I tell you my brother went to Benfield that day to say he wouldn’t complete the deed despite the richness of your holdings. Don’t forget that I was there as well and saw what you saw, but also what you didn’t see. Your father could never have forced Rannulf if my brother hadn't found something about you he couldn’t refuse."

  Rowena stared at Temric as if she could pick the truth out from the white and black relief of his face. "Even if this is as you say," she replied quietly, "I fear your words come too late to help me. I held my anger too long and vented it too soon. I not only accused him of intending betrayal, I also told him I want no more to do with him and swore to confine myself to the women's quarters."

  To her utter astonishment Temric laughed aloud. "Good work, my lady. First you show him your jealousy, then you remove yourself from his reach. That'll tweak him right merrily. It looks as though you needed no help from me after all."

  "How can you laugh," Rowena replied, a little irritated by his amusement. "You come to see why I stop trying, then laugh when I say I not only quit fighting, but also left the battlefield. You laugh when I now give up all rights to the title Lady Graistan?"

  Temric only smiled. "You lost nothing. Of your rights to this keep, you took those in one masterful stroke on your first night here and will hold them as your own until you choose to release them. You know that. It’s my brother you want. Don’t shake your head at me, for only a blind man couldn’t see what lives in your face. If you had no place for Rannulf in your heart Maeve's words would not have given you a moment's pause."

  Stung into silence by his statement Rowena watched him straighten as if to signal the end of their unexpected conversation. "There has been an ocean of heartbreak here. It trapped us all in its chains until we believed we'd never again be free of it. Yet, in you come and sweep most of it clean as if it was no more to do than lift a spilled cup and wipe away the slop. You’ve opened the door for him, now Rannulf must free himself."

  Rowena relaxed back on her bench. "What happened here? What plays between Rannulf and Gilliam, and how is it Maeve has such a hold over them?" she asked softly, but Temric’s upraised hand forestalled any further questions.

  "Ask your husband. If you are the woman I think you are, he’ll tell you."

  "It’s too late," she whispered to herself.

  "Not yet," he answered easily.

  "So you say," Rowena sighed. Despite his words, she found no reason to hope. "But I thank you for your friendship. Oftimes, I feel so alone. Until I came to Graistan my solitariness never pained me. Here, where there are so many who love me and I should feel accepted, the hole in my heart seems greater than ever."

  "You, lonely? I am surprised," he said, sounding genuinely so. "You know who you are."

  "Know who I am? What do you mean?" Rowena frowned at him in confusion.

  "I mean that you are noble by class."

  "What has rank to do with loneliness or identity?" she returned. "A title didn’t spare me from being an unwanted daughter, rejected by my mother simply because I was my father's spawn and only desired by my father as a weapon to use against my dam. Who am I now but Lady Graistan, except that Lord Graistan won’t acknowledge that’s who I am." She plucked a pink and held the bl
oom to her nose. Its warm, rich scent eased the throbbing in her head. "Identity has nothing to do with being common or noble nor should you judge it so."

  "My apologies. It’s an unfortunate habit of mine, since I am both and neither." His smile gleamed lopsidedly in the moonlight.

  Rowena leaned forward a little to brace her elbows on her knees. "But Rannulf loves you so. I cannot believe he’d deny you if you asked him for your acknowledgment as the son of his father."

  "Oh, he’d give it to me, all of it, Graistan included. But it’s not his to grant. If my father—" His voice went so flat and hard that he had to turn his face away from her for a moment to escape the pain he'd revealed.

  "You are the elder," she said in understanding. If not for Temric’s bastard birth, he would have been Graistan’s lord.

  The man's tenseness drained away. She saw it in the steady drop of his shoulders. When he again faced her, she read resolve in his shadowy outline.

  "Well, I’ve pried ham-handedly into your deepest secrets. It’s only just that I grant you the same courtesy. Aye, I’m the elder by only months. My mother was Rannulf’s nurse, for his mother was sickly and died giving him birth. But, don’t think I ever coveted him his birthright for I have not."

  "You wouldn’t care so for him if you did." And in speaking these words she knew Temric was right. It was no title or building she fought for. She ached for what these brothers shared, the thing that touched every soul within this keep and of which she'd had so little in her life. Their love for each other was like the mortar that held Graistan's walls stone to stone. It created an unbreakable bond that even Maeve, for all her trying, had been unable to destroy. And suddenly Rowena knew it was only her husband who could fill the hole in her heart, no other. And this he would never grant her for she, herself, had dealt her chances a deathblow. Despair took hold of Rowena’s heart.

  "We were raised together, trained together, and would have been knighted together, had our father lived or so Rannulf insists." Temric spoke on.