He leaned back against the rich fabric of the settle and resumed tracing the floral pattern with his finger. He recalled doing that when he was very young, while his mother sang of their history or his father spun tales of long-ago battles. For a moment, he was back there, a boy listening with rapt attention, wondering where he would fit in to the family saga.
Alys was the one who had remained here, tended his mother and consoled his father. He could see the sadness in her countenance as she spoke of them. Lashing out at her served no purpose at all.
How lovely she was, grandly fulfilling the promise of beauty she had possessed as a child. He had not realized how truly beautiful she had grown until seeing her just now, arrayed in blue silks the color of her eyes, tawny hair flowing freely, nearly brushing her waist as she walked away.
Alys of Camoy was a maid to incite longing in a man. In him, which made him feel even guiltier than before. And, he had to admit, vastly relieved at the sensations she had awakened.
But how could she still be merry after all he had said? She seemed concerned about him, too. Perhaps too much so to be believed. He needed to believe it, though. He desperately wanted to know someone other than a squire who depended on him for employment had cared whether he lived or died.
John realized if he had returned to England and wed Alys before his capture, her concern now might seem less false, might even have restored at least some of his faith in people. Too late.
He would set this girl free to be happy. He knew he would never make her so. Physically, they might suit very well indeed. She would surely be willing. He was delighted to still be able. Her merest touch just now, the clean sweet essence of her and the innocent yet hungry way she looked at him stirred his loins as few women had ever done with so little effort. But she would always remind him of his long years of negligence and she would endure a future filled with that, as well. He did not need a wife to worry about as he rode into battle.
She had been left hanging on the vine too long, but she still had her beauty and innocence. She could make another match with no trouble, even at her age, given her inheritance. However, the thought of her marrying another bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
Before this betrothal, she had been given a boy of six and then a lord old enough to be her grandfather. As he understood it, one had died, the other had grown too infirm. Heiresses had no say, but were given simply to satisfy some debt or favor granted by the king. John’s father had thought her a prize. John had not thought of her at all until her letter about his mother.
Anyone would suit her better than himself, but still he did not like to think of it. She was his, at least his responsibility, no matter that he had no intention to wed her.
How could he do that and withstand the constant reminder of guilt she invoked? And could he ever admit and then banish the spark of envy he felt that she had enjoyed many more years of his parents’ company than he had done? Sent away to foster at the age of seven and allowed only short visits with them, John felt he had hardly known his mother and father, certainly never as well as Alys had.
You could get to know them through her, a small voice in his head assured him. And you could make up for the misery and disappointment you caused her if you will only accept your new role in life and let go of your anger.
But the miasma and need for revenge on his captors would not let go of him. Besides, he was a knight, born for battle, not a lord to hang about the castle, count crops and settle disputes. His heart felt too heavy to lift at any thought, even the thought of the lovely maid who was his by law and had declared she loved him.
Ha! What could this child-woman possibly know of love? And even at near thirty, a world-weary man, what did he know of it?
However, John would not deny that the very sight of Alys this evening stirred feelings within him that had lain dormant for a year. Her own frank appraisal of him indicated she entertained a few of the same inclinations. Not surprising since she had blossomed some years ago and not yet been plucked.
That meant he must quickly remove himself from Hetherston or marry her, one or the other. Lust was much easier to comprehend than love and far more difficult to suppress.
Supper last eve had proved abysmal, Alys thought. John had barely spoken during the entire meal and made her feel the fool for trying to fill the silence with constant chatter. He seemed mired in the past, imprisoned by it as surely as he had been held captive by the Spanish.
The morning had dawned bright with unusual warmth for the month of March. Alys had decided to let the issue of their marriage lie for a while and give John time to grow used to his home again, to England’s beauty, to freedom and folk about him who offered no ill intent. It must have been a horrible year for him.
Alys kept her distance, yet she felt his gaze upon her as she crossed the great hall on her way to the gardens. This morning, he had taken a seat by the fire and passed the time nursing a cup of ale.
Walter’s favorite hound, Troubadour, lay at John’s feet while Walter himself hung back behind the settle unobserved. She had warned the boy not to bother John until he was well again.
Alys continued on her way to gather fresh herbs for the preparation of the day’s meals. Usually she sent one of the kitchen maids to perform the task, but staying busy provided the best way to avoid further contact with John.
Given time, he would lose the choler that had accompanied him home. Let him approach her next time.
She turned at the doorway and cast him the brightest smile she could muster. It faded immediately when she quit the hall and started slowly down the stone steps. No cause to hurry now. She would soon run out of busywork if she kept up this pace.
“Alys?”
She whirled around, surprised that he had followed her. “Aye, John?”
He smiled without rancor for the first time since his arrival. “Spoken exactly as my mother used to do. Where do you go?”
“The gardens,” she explained, feeling suddenly shy and fluttery. She held up the basket as if to verify her errand.
“May I go with you?”
“Of course, if you feel well enough.” Oh, please, please let his heart have softened. Let him be recovered and now the happy knight of her dreams.
Together they made their way outside. He opened the gate to the garden and stood aside for her to enter. “This has not changed,” he said with a sigh, apparently glad that it had not.
“Why change things that are as they should be?” she asked, bending to pinch back a leggy bush of thyme. She placed some of the tender sprigs in the basket and stood again.
“Why, indeed,” he agreed, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed in thought. “Constants are comforting.”
“Yet most of your constants have gone awry,” she said softly, looking up at him, feeling his pain as if it were her own. “John, do not grieve so for them. They would not wish it.”
“I know. It is for myself I grieve. If I had but come sooner…”
“What is done cannot be undone. And it is well-known that Lancaster is jealous of everyone’s attention. If anyone is to blame, it is he.”
“You excuse me so easily as that?” he demanded.
“Does that matter? You will not excuse yourself.” Alys focused on her task, crouching to gather leaves of rosemary and place them carefully in one corner.
“You are entirely too good,” he said, sounding annoyed.
Aye, but she could be bad, Alys thought, and how dreadfully she wanted to be. If there was naught else to be considered, she would grab him by the shoulders, shake him soundly and order him to stop flailing himself like a penitent. The past was past. He needed to look to the future.
The luster of her perfect knight continued to dim more each time they had words. Why could he not be as he was before? He should not have this fault, this horrid wrinkle in his armor. And why, knowing that he did, should she so desperately want to hold him in her arms and assure him things were not as bad as he believ
ed? After she shook him, of course. Alys smiled at her conundrum.
With a deep breath, she stood and calmly progressed down the narrow path betwixt the herb beds.
When she glanced back to see whether he followed, he was gone. He truly needed shaking, but she could not be the one to do it. If she angered him, it would only give him greater reason to set her aside.
She knew that look he wore, one of regret and imminent rejection. She had seen it upon the faces of the people who had declined to take her in after her father and her young intended had died within days of one another. Despite how it might have profited them, not one wanted the child of a plague victim in their household. One elderly earl had consented, though he had probably been past reasoning, even then, and died soon after.
None had accepted her but John’s parents, who welcomed her like a daughter and sought to make that a fact with her future marriage to their son. Her profound gratitude had soon blossomed into love for them and included their progeny. John first, because he had been the stuff of any girl’s hopes and dreams. Then she loved little Walter, whom she had taken full care of since his birth. As he learned his first words, he had called her mama, too, much to the amusement of his own dear mother.
Alys had promised the sweet lady she would fulfill that role for her. But if, in a fit of misguided grief and temper, John set aside the contract, Alys would have no say in Walter’s up-bringing. The boy would become orphaned as Alys herself had been at his age. The other promise she had made her foster mother would also go begging. If she were not wife to John, how could she see to his happiness and well-being?
So she must remain good, as he had said of her. At all cost, she must appear to be good.
John nearly stumbled over the lad sitting next to the wall on the darkened stairs. “Have a care where you huddle!” he snapped, righting himself with a hand braced on the wall.
“Where is she?” the boy asked.
“Alys?”
The little fellow nodded. “I saw her leave and you went after. Did she tell you?”
John placed a hand on the small shoulder. “Tell me what?”
“That I was giving you Troubadour. I decided before you came that you might like him for a gift. She said I did not have to, but I want you to like me.”
“Troubadour? You’re giving me a singer?”
A fit of giggles erupted, contagious enough to draw a smile from John.
The boy pointed up the stairs. “Nay, the hound in the hall. Though he did wail a good song at night when he was a pup, hence his name.”
John took a seat beside the boy on the steps. “So you would part with this treasure so I will like you well, eh? What is your name, lad?”
“Walter, sir. We met in the bailey when you rode in. Can you not recall it?”
“Ah, the tumbler. How could I forget? You are a player in residence then?” John was unused to dealing with children. In fact, he could scarcely remember ever having had an actual conversation with one, even with Alys when she was young. Somehow, this lad put him in mind of Alys. Perhaps the smile.
“So, tell me, Walter…What is the lady Alys to you? Do you foster here?” John couldn’t see how that would be since his father was dead and there was no lord to see to the boy’s training. However, this was no peasant or tradesman’s son, judging by his speech and rich clothing.
The large blue eyes widened. “Why she is mother to me, sir. There is no sweeter one alive than she.” Then the small face grimaced. “Though she does swat my hind side when I misbehave and takes away my sweets when I forget my manners.”
John hardly heard the last part. “Mother?”
The boy nodded. “But I must call her Alys as though she is my sister, she says, so I do.” The boy jumped up. “Come and meet Troubadour now. He did warm your feet by the fire earlier, but you paid him no heed.”
“I saw the hound.” John muttered as he got up, his weariness of heart and body increased tenfold. He needed to speak with the factor immediately, if the man could be found, and discover how it was that his parents had harbored Alys and her bastard after she dishonored them. Perhaps she had been the victim of an assault and bearing the child was no fault of hers. That would easily explain why they would have kept her.
Alys had mentioned a letter his mother had written about the boy’s birth, had she not? He had never received it.
Letters had been few, brief in nature and often read by many before arriving at their true destination if they ever made it that far. All save for royal correspondence had dwindled to near nothing with the duke’s army shifting from France to Spain and then back again.
“How old are you, Walter?”
“Five years, sir.”
John’s mother had been dead over a year. In Alys’s short missive informing him of that, she had made no mention of this child. His father’s few letters contained nothing personal and had dealt only with the shape of politics, keeping John apprised of the king’s current sympathies and the leanings of the other barons.
John felt obliged to learn the truth about Alys. If she had betrayed him, he need not look further for a reason to end their betrothal. However, if she had not gone willingly to another man’s bed, what then? His parents obviously had not seen fit to turn her out. And he could have come home years ago and married her as he should have done. That might have protected her.
“Go along and tend the hound for me, Walter,” John ordered. “See that he stays clean and free of fleas.”
“Then will you take him? For your own?” the boy asked in a small voice.
John felt touched by the gift, no matter how it had come about. But he would soon be leaving. “I will claim him and thank you, Walter, but since he is well used to you, perhaps you could mind him for me?”
“I will! Forever!” the lad declared and scampered away.
John trudged slowly up the stairs. He did not want to find that Alys had played him false. He wanted to believe that she was as good as she first appeared, even if her excessive cheerfulness did rankle. The trouble was, her determined effort to please him had a possible motive now. It made sense.
“That was so kind of you, John,” Alys said, coming up behind him just as he reached the hall. “I heard you charge Walter with the care of his dog.” She laughed. “Or I should say, your dog.”
John figured he would settle the matter of Walter here and now. “The boy says you are his mother.”
For a long second, her gaze searched his. The smile faltered. He saw tears form in her eyes, though they did not fall.
“And you believe this?” she asked, her voice soft, “That I would have borne a child and kept it secret from you?”
“Why would the lad lie?” John challenged. “I would have the truth from you, Alys. Is he yours?”
“Mine, precisely as Troubadour the hound is yours, my lord,” she said, her words measured and careful. “A living gift entrusted to my care. Nay, I did not give birth to him, but I helped bring him into this world and I nurture him well, never doubt it. In my heart, he is mine.”
“I shall ask others if what you say is true,” he warned.
“I know. Why not begin with Father Stephen?” With that curt suggestion, she pushed past him on the steps, her stride hurried as if she could not wait to get away. Finally, he had seen she could get angry.
If she was telling the truth, he could hardly fault her for it. He had accused her outright of what amounted to fornication and then, of lying about it. Tact and subtlety had deserted him sometime during the Spanish campaign. Perhaps he had never owned those qualities. The women he had known thus far had not required the social niceties of a knight.
If Alys were guilty, John knew she would be packed and ready to leave when he saw her next, if he saw her at all. He went back into the hall, wondering whom he should approach first with the dreaded questions.
Why did he feel so sick at heart?
Chapter Three
“Lord John?” A very feminine voice accosted John a
s he was pondering the problem of asking about Alys. “A moment, if you please!”
Approaching was the woman whom he had mistaken at first for his betrothed. Though they had not spoken past Alys’s introduction at supper, John had noted the sly looks this one had cast him.
She held out her hand. A fine hand it was, too, unmarred by any blemish, the nails long and buffed to a sheen. Her face, too, looked perfect. Too perfect to be natural. A court beauty, he thought, enhanced by the delicate application of potions and dyes. If she only knew how contrived was her appearance when compared to the natural loveliness of her cousin.
“Lady Thomasine,” he acknowledged.
“You seemed too spent last evening for conversation, so I kept a distance,” she said. “Now I am eager that we should become acquainted.”
John raised her hand, stopping just short of brushing the back of it with his lips. “Charmed,” he said, though he was far from it. The overly lush scent of roses surrounded her. That, together with her brittle smile, set him on edge. He recognized a glimmer of mischief in the cat’s green eyes.
He decided, on the instant, that this was not the one with whom he should begin his inquiry about Walter’s parentage.
She pressed her free hand to her bosom and simpered. “It is I who am beguiled, my lord. Alys never told me how handsome you are. But then, perhaps she never noticed.”
“She was only eleven when we met,” John explained. “No doubt her interest then lay more in her poppets and pets.”
“No doubt,” the woman agreed, holding on to his hand when he would have let hers go. “Silly Alys. Even at that tender age, I knew a prize when I saw one. You, my fine lord, most assuredly fit that mold.” Her gaze raked his body.
Alys’s cousin was flirting with him, and outrageously. John had no experience concerning interested women with whom he was forbidden to engage. How did a man turn them away while maintaining their goodwill? Escape seemed the only answer.
“Forgive me,” he said, abruptly. “I am ill.” He was, no lie. She sickened him, as would anyone seeking to betray family. Forget tact and subtlety and dash her goodwill.
Broken Vows, Mended Hearts: A Bouquet of ThistlesPaying the PiperBattle-Torn Bride Page 3