The wagon rolled to a stop and all three Fortunes stared at the castle in silence, Walter being first to speak after a long, tense moment.
“Are you certain, Michaela?” was all he asked.
Michaela swallowed down the lump in her throat. “Yes, Papa. I’m certain.” But, please, let’s go before I lose my resolve.
In just shy of an hour, they clattered across Cherbon’s lowered drawbridge, passing through vine-covered walls of the barbican that were easily twenty feet thick, damp with fog and moss and foliage as if enchanted. Here, at ground level, mist seemed to hang as if they had passed from the real world of the surrounding English countryside into a dark realm of fairy lore.
Though no one had called out to them as they approached the castle or passed under the raised gate, prompting Michaela to wonder that the whole place wasn’t abandoned, they saw serfs aplenty about the bailey, busy with a myriad of tasks. But the wide inner grounds were eerily somber; no one spoke or shouted or called to a friend, no workday songs were sung. Even the clangs from what sounded like a smithy’s shop were oddly muffled.
And everyone completely ignored the three people rolling through the bailey in the cart.
Walter was maneuvering their conveyance around the south side of the inner compound when the stilted silence of the bailey was breached by a muffled shriek.
The door to the keep flew open and a tall, malnourished- looking woman burst through the doorway in a billow of drab skirt, frantically snatching up the thin material while dashing away from the keep. She ran toward the cart seemingly as fast as she could command her legs, her eyes full of terror and her mouth pulled wide. She fairly flew past the Fortunes with nary a glance, and Michaela turned to watch the woman disappear into the dark throat of the barbican.
She jumped back to attention when the keep door slammed shut, echoing in the bailey.
None of the serfs had made a move to assist the woman, only stared in mild curiosity until she was gone. And then they had taken up their work once more.
“Michaela…” Agatha began in a warbling, worried voice.
But Michaela knew that if she allowed her mother to speak aloud the fears racing through her own mind, she would never descend from the cart and do what had to be done. She gathered up her skirts, the now-wrinkled decree from the Lord of Cherbon still gripped tightly in her fist, and hopped to the ground.
“Wait here,” she tossed over her shoulder to her parents, and was proud of the calm, assured tone that came out of her mouth. She straightened her spine and marched toward the keep, ready to do battle with the devil.
And suddenly, the door was before her, tall and wide and thick and solid. And suddenly again, it was more than a door. It was her unsure future.
She knocked.
Michaela’s hand had barely ceased rapping when the door began to inch open and a man’s voice called out.
“Oh, changed your mind, have you? Well, that’s simply too bad. You’ll—” A sliver of a face appeared in the opening, half hidden in shadow. Their eyes seemed to travel past Michaela and scan the bailey behind her, as if looking for the fled woman. Then she was pinned by their gaze, sparkling in the darkness. “What do you want?”
Oh, he was going to be a nasty one.
Michaela gathered her courage and offered the missive to the crack in the door. “Lord Cherbon, I presume?”
The parchment was snatched from her hand and in a moment the man gave a shout of laughter. He seemed to address the hall behind him.
“We’ve another contestant yet, Rick! Poor little poppet—she thinks I’m you!” The door swung open wide. “Welcome to Cherbon, Miss Fortune.”
Roderick still stood in the shadows, where he had been en route to his chambers when Hugh’s greeting of their unexpected visitor reached his ears.
Was it some specter come to call? Hugh’s odd sense of humor often prompted outrageous bits of nonsense from his mouth, but surely he would not jest so about welcoming misfortune to Cherbon.
They’d had enough of that bastard already.
But then the door swung wide, emitting the weak foggy sunlight from the bailey, and Roderick saw the woman silhouetted in the doorway. He stepped back onto the lowest riser of the stair, disappearing completely into the darkness of the tall corridor.
“Well, come in, come in!” Hugh commanded exasperatedly, sweeping his arm wide.
The woman hesitated and glanced behind her. “My trunk—my parents…”
“Are you of age?” When the woman nodded hesitantly, Hugh gave a put-out sigh and leaned past her to shout through the doorway, “I’ve no time at all to deal with you. Yes, yes, she’ll be fine. Just toss the trunk over the side, then, thanks. Good day.” Then he pulled the woman in by her arm and closed the door firmly.
Hugh all but dragged the woman to the lord’s table, peering toward the corridor where Roderick was hidden away. “Oh, you’ve just missed him,” Hugh lamented to the woman—little more than a girl, Roderick now saw. Hugh spun a low stool about, released the woman’s arm and patted the seat. “Here you are,” he said as he turned and flopped into Roderick’s own chair, already reaching for a stack of parchment and quill.
The woman stood there for a moment, as if unsure she would stay, and Roderick took those spare seconds to look at her.
She was…enchanting. Her hair was blond, no…a reddish—no, blond, tied back at either temple and then together into one long plait. She was not slender, but not plump, her back smooth and trim in her gown. Perhaps a bit shorter than average.
Her profile mesmerized Roderick—softly rounded cheeks colored with a flush of disconcertment, brow wrinkled delicately, her mouth pinched into a stingy bud. Her ears were like tiny shells, pale and perfect.
Surely she could not be here to answer his call.
“Well?” Hugh demanded. “Are you going to sit or aren’t you? If you’ve already changed your mind then you should run, run, run—your parents are likely over the drawbridge by now. I’m certain it’s a long walk to”—he looked in disdain at her simple gown—“wherever it is you’re from. Not Tornfield any longer, I reckon.”
The woman stood there a moment longer. “Thank you for your concern, but I think I shall stay.” Closer now to Roderick’s ears, her voice sounded like a breeze over a rippling stream—refreshing and light and sweet. She sat.
“Very good.” Hugh took the quill at the ready. “Name? I assume you are not legally called Miss Fortune…are you?”
“Lady Michaela Fortune,” she supplied. “My parents are Walter and Agatha. We are vassal to the Tornfield hold, on the south most edge of the shire.”
Fortune, Roderick thought to himself. I know that surname.
“Ah! So you are actually Miss Fortune.” Hugh seemed quite pleased with that bit of information as he scribbled. “Age?”
“A score and one, come January.”
“So, one score, now.”
Lady Michaela’s mouth pinched again. “Yes. Sorry.”
“Have you been or are you now married?”
“No.”
“I daresay I already knew the answer to that one, didn’t I? Ha! Children?”
“None.”
“Sickness?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Hugh sighed. “The clap, leprosy, weeping sores, lazy eye—are you ill?”
“Oh. No. I’m quite healthy.”
“Wanted by the law?”
“I should hope not!” she exclaimed as if horrified.
“I must ask, you understand. You’d be surprised how—any matter.” Hugh lay down the quill and leaned back in the chair to scrutinize Lady Michaela Fortune. “The terms of the agreement, as you likely have already read—you can read, I assume?”
Roderick saw one slender eyebrow raise. “A bit, yes.”
“Very good. Ninety consecutive—that means all-in-a-row, one-after-the-other—days at Cherbon, while your suitability as a potential bride is determined. During that time, you will assume the duti
es of lady and evaluate the compatibility between you and Lord Cherbon. If, at the end of ninety days—which I must tell you I doubt highly you will endure—all the criteria have been met and it is agreeable to both you and the lord, you will be wed. Your prize will then be legally recorded and dispensed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I—”
“Good. Any questions?”
“Well, may—?”
“Fine. Sign here.” He shoved the parchment and quill at the young woman who took them and quickly scribbled along the bottom of the page. Then Hugh snatched the items away once more before shooting from his seat and heading toward where Roderick still hid. “Come along, come along—I will show you to your chamber.”
Roderick stepped from the stairs and ducked underneath the cubby behind them just before Hugh and a trotting Lady Fortune entered the corridor and swished above. The air behind the woman smelled like freshly mown hay.
“But my trunk—” the woman was arguing with Hugh’s back.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure there are many valuables in it. We’ll have it sent up. In the meantime you can make do with what the last one left about the chamber…”
Roderick stood in the darkness, his heart pounding, pounding, while the fresh, green fragrance of Michaela Fortune hung in the shadows around him like a warning.
Chapter Seven
The chamber was absolutely dreadful. Though sumptuously appointed with expensive fabrics and furnishings, Michaela felt smothered by feelings of despair and fear as soon as she followed Sir Hugh Gilbert through the doorway. She shivered so violently that she stumbled on her feet.
Hugh Gilbert cocked a wry eyebrow at her before continuing in the lecture he’d begun in the hall below. “Meals are taken thrice a day. Lonely affairs, but the food is passable. Necessary rooms are down the hall past your door about three score steps. I’d use the one on the right if I were you. The servants slip into the left-hand one—as if I don’t know—and their diet leaves a rather unpleasant atmosphere to follow.”
There was so much to take in, almost as if Michaela had landed in a foreign country and had only an hour to learn the customs of the natives. “Necessary rooms?”
“Oh, you know.” Hugh sighed, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling briefly before leaning forward and saying in a loud whisper, “Where you go to tinkle.”
“Oh. Oh!” Michaela flushed. “When will I receive Lord Cherbon?”
“When will—” Hugh broke off in a rather loud and rude laugh. “You won’t receive him at all, poppet. When he is ready to assess you, you will be summoned. Until that time, simply go about your business.”
“Assess me?” This man was grating on Michaela’s good graces. “Like a cow, you mean.”
“Oh, no, my lady,” Hugh said, appearing horrified by the suggestion. “More like a horse.”
Michaela wished for a large rock to chuck at the man.
“If there is anything you have need of that the staff cannot accommodate—which would not surprise me as they’re hopelessly inept—simply send word. Sir Hugh Gilbert shall scurry-scurry to your side most obediently.” His tone was mocking to the extreme.
“Sir Hugh Gilbert?” Michaela asked pointedly, eyeing the man’s fine costume. Beyond fine—it was magnificent, with embroidery and deep velvet. Fit more for royalty than a lowly crusading knight. “Is that—”
Sir Hugh’s eyes sparkled like deep, icy water and his beautiful lips thinned. “Yes. Sir. ‘Lord of Nothing’ is hardly impressive, is it?” He gave her a tight smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll see that your trunk is brought up.” He gave a mocking bow. “Miss Fortune.”
The chamber door closed.
Michaela growled and spun on her heel, looking for any convenient object to hurl. But her loose, worn slipper slid from beneath her heel and tangled in the rug underfoot, wrenching her ankle and sending her to the floor with a cry. As she landed, she heard the odd sound of a musical giggle, like a child would make, and she rose up on her hands, searching the low shadows from floor level.
“Who was that? Who’s here? Show yourself!” Michaela held her breath and listened, but heard not another whisper. A feeling of being watched tiptoed between her shoulder blades on icy feet.
Was Cherbon Castle haunted? It would explain the morbid surroundings, but Michaela did not think she could resign herself to sharing a bedchamber with a spirit, no matter how outrageous the prize.
How would she ever get undressed with any modesty?
“Hello?” she called quietly. She swallowed, and the sound was loud in the vast room. “Are you…are you a ghost?”
The giggle sounded again, from behind her. Michaela sat up quickly and turned just in time to see the little boy dash from behind a drapery to the door.
“Wait!” Michaela called, and struggled to gain her feet.
But the dark-haired child wrenched open the door and fled into the corridor on bare feet, leaving the door swinging wide behind him.
Michaela sat on the floor, undecided. Probably the child belonged to some servant of Cherbon, brought to the castle by his parent and warned to stay out of sight—it would explain the hiding. She looked about the dismal room, the despair seeming to seep from the very walls, then to the open doorway and black corridor beyond.
The boy, more familiar with the castle than Michaela, was likely already to the stone keep’s heart on his swift feet by now. She’d never catch him.
Go about your business, Sir Hugh Gilbert had said.
If she was to become Lady of Cherbon, wasn’t the manor’s children—their whereabouts and unruly behavior—her business? Besides, she must learn the passages of her new home eventually. And finding the boy might lend her some insight as to the strange and unconcerned behavior of the villagers. Perhaps she would even encounter the great and lordly Lord Cherbon in her explorations.
Her stomach did a nervous wiggle.
Michaela gained her feet and marched into the corridor, leaving the door standing open.
Roderick limped straightaway to his chamber, confident that Hugh would soon follow, and he was not disappointed. His handsome, dark-haired friend came through the door, chuckling, not long after Roderick had settled into his chair and began the struggle with his boots.
There would be no further need for the damned things until nightfall, when he could move about the keep on his own, now that one applicant had fled and a new one—much to his surprise—had been installed. And this woman was one Roderick wanted nothing to do with at this point.
She was dangerous to him, he could feel it. Dangerous, but also essential to his survival.
Hugh closed the door, and as soon as the action was complete, he doubled over, his hands on his knees, laughing.
“I take it you find the new girl amusing?” Roderick asked. He knew his tone was pissy, but he didn’t care. His heart still pounded in a strange and foreign way from seeing Michaela Fortune, and it unsettled him. Roderick told himself it was because the young woman was likely his last hope to win Cherbon, and not at all because of her smell, her voice, her oddly colored hair; how she had seemed bold yet naïve in the way she’d answered Hugh’s probing and—Roderick had to admit—rude questions. Perhaps it was simple honesty Roderick had seen in her, but regardless, it was unsettling.
“Oh, good lord, yes!” Hugh gasped. He dragged his feet to the side of Roderick’s bed and collapsed on it. “This is just too, too good, Rick—hoo!”
“Are you going to tell me the why of it, or just lie there cackling on my bed?”
Hugh took a deep, steadying breath, chuckles still escaping him. At last he seemed to gain control over his mirth. “I know the chit, Rick—I’ve just seen her, four days past, at the Tornfield feast.”
“She was at Tornfield?” Roderick yanked off his tall, stiff left boot with a “Gah—you bastard!” He tossed the boot to the floor. “As a guest?”
“Since she was seated at Tornfield’s own table, his daughter between them, a guest of honor was my first ass
umption.”
“Not so?”
“Not so.” Hugh sat up, leaning on one long arm—his right arm, Roderick couldn’t help but notice. Roderick could see the flexion of his elbow through his tight sleeve. “She was in Tornfield’s employ as companion to his daughter.”
“She was his servant?”
“Yes, and no,” Hugh said, a chuckle creeping back into his voice, as if the memory tickled him. “Elizabeth Tornfield has been mute since her mother’s death some time ago. Miss Fortune managed to coax the girl from some rather antisocial behavior and Tornfield was so thrilled that he offered her a position in the hold in lieu of her parents’ dues. It seems the three of them grew rather…close. So close in fact, that Miss Fortune and the girl were under the assumption that Tornfield would marry her.”
“I vow you gossip more than the kitchen maids.”
“Oh-ho, Rick, you disparage me unjustly! I did not come by this knowledge from gossip—Tornfield’s daughter stood up in front of all the hall and objected to his marrying the Osprey woman in favor of Miss Fortune, just as the ceremony was to commence! Everyone was completely humiliated!”
Something sharp twisted in Roderick’s stomach. “You didn’t feel this was aught which I should know?”
“Why would I?” Hugh protested. “I thought she was but a servant with rather ridiculous ambition. It was not more than a humorous anecdote at the time, and I know how little use you have for humor these days. I’d no idea until today that she was of noble blood.”
Roderick grunted. Fortune, Fortune…Again, he searched his mind for a reference point for the name. He knew he’d heard it before, in connection with his father, but he could not place it.
“So what now, Rick?” Hugh asked, getting up from the bed and gathering up Roderick’s discarded boots. He poured a chalice of wine and placed it in Roderick’s hand. “A pair of days, and then you will meet her?”
The suggestion caused Roderick to break out immediately in a cold sweat. “I think not, Hugh,” he tried to say evenly. “The longer we put this one off, the better.”
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