The Mercenary's Bride

by TERRI BRISBIN

  Lucais smacked him on his shoulder and laughed. ‘I said that you and the lady have taken to marriage like a pig in shit,’ he explained. ‘Women all over Brittany and Normandy are lamenting over the loss of two of their beautiful bastards.’

  ‘Just so,’ Brice answered, shaking himself from his reverie. ‘When Simon married Elise, I knew it was the end of the world as we knew it!’ he said, laughing. They’d always tried not to take their reputations too seriously, for it was more about foolish pursuits than serious ones. Of course there was a third one lost, as well, but at least he was alive.

  ‘We were discussing…?’ Brice had truly lost track of their conversation, though he loathed admitting it even to Luc, who shook his head and laughed once more.

  ‘How many acres of wheat we should plant this season,’ his castellan reminded him. ‘And barley.’

  Brice knew little about agriculture, having focused on his fighting skills, expecting to live out a life as a mercenary, fighting for whichever lord could pay his fee. Now, though, it was his responsibility, for the fruitfulness of the crops led to the success of his position here in England. Not as exciting as a battle, but it could be much more lucrative.

  But more than that, it was about putting down roots, building a family, a place of his own. For that, he would learn about crops and fields lying fallow and how many goats and cows and pigs they needed to sustain themselves. Luckily, men like Lucais, who came from a large estate in Anjou where his father was steward, never lost their knowledge when they picked up the skills of a knight and were a great help.

  Giles had the benefit of keeping mostly all the villeins and freemen who’d lived on Taerford before he gained its lands, but Oremund had successfully chased off, killed or moved most of the original people of this estate, thus leaving Brice the task of rebuilding not only the land, but also the people.

  Lucais pointed out several fields from their vantage point and discussed his plans for them, but Brice’s attention had already been drawn to his wife’s lush figure as she walked across the yard towards the keep. Though she chatted with Leoma and another woman and was the perfect picture of innocence, he knew the woman beneath the facade now. The one who shed her inhibitions as he shed her clothes. The one who gave herself to him in breathtaking abandon. And, unfortunately, the one who trusted him completely with her body, but not yet with her secrets.

  Brice realised he must regain his control and find out the reasons behind Oremund’s obsession with this place and with her. And it had to be soon, for his spies had returned with reports of Edmund Haroldson being seen in the area. That could be no good. He let out his breath and shook his head, still watching the sway of Gillian’s hips as she walked.

  He’d spent a fortnight joyously swiving his wife while danger escalated around him. Finding Edmund and Oremund was a necessary task and one that needed to be done immediately. No more dallying with his wife. No more waiting and watching.

  It was time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gillian sat at the table alone.

  Well, the dozens of others who ate around her belied that claim, but without Brice there, it seemed empty. Looking around, she noticed that more than a few of his men were also missing from supper.

  Their lives had settled into a pattern over the last fortnight. He’d asked her to take over the duties of overseeing his, their, household and she’d accepted. She doubted he knew the significance of his request, but she did, as did those of Oremund’s people who remained here. Brice had carried through on his words that she was lady here, in name and in fact, and that he trusted her.

  Duties that her mother had trained her to take on were now hers. Duties her father had given and her brother had taken were hers once more.

  Duties that included seeing to his meals.

  He’d sent no word that he would not be here, indeed, he’d walked past her in the yard, acknowledging her with a silent nod of his head before mounting his horse and riding out of the gates with a small troop of his men on some task. She’d turned and watched and waited for some private sign or expression as had become their custom these last few weeks, but he gave none. He never even turned to look at her as he rode off.

  She finished her meal, though it turned tasteless in her mouth as she thought of Brice’s behaviour. After giving orders to keep enough warm for those who’d missed the meal, she climbed the steps to her room to wait for his return.

  Mayhap it was the beginning of her courses that made her feel so different? Could he tell they’d begun? Had someone told him and so he had no desire for her now? Is that how it was between husbands and wives?

  She had no memory about her parents’ marriage, or their pursuit of passion together, something she did not want to dwell upon. And though her own marriage was often discussed, she’d not had any idea of what truly happened in the marriage bed until she wed. Oh, she’d seen and heard things and even heard bawdy comments from men and women about the physical aspects, but until Brice had done some of those things to her and with her, she never understood them.

  Now, she understood. And she wanted him.

  She reached her chambers and looked for the mending that needed to be done. Sitting nearest the table where several candles burned, Gillian began stitching the torn fabric, replacing missing buttons and making other repairs.

  Was it a bad thing to want him so much?

  She certainly had not felt this way about Lord Raedan, Oremund’s crony and the one he’d promised her to. Raedan was old enough to be her father, older still than that, and his wrinkled skin hung in folds around his neck. His breath stank and his touch was worse still. She shuddered just thinking of what would have awaited her in his bed and could not imagine such intimacies with him as she’d shared with Brice.

  Now that she thought about it, Oremund had never promised marriage to him, only that she would be Raedan’s. Brice’s missive, telling of King William’s granting of Thaxted to him, only hurried Oremund’s efforts along. He could not turn her over to Raedan until he found out where the missing fortune was and he could not abandon Thaxted without her. Her frequent escapes or attempts slowed him down and then, thankfully, Brice’s arrival with his troops stopped it.

  Gillian closed her eyes and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from her brother’s plans. Despite Brice being a foreigner, an invader, the supporter of an enemy king, he was the best thing that could have happened to Thaxted and to her. She only hoped that his change in behaviour this day was not a sign that he now thought their marriage a mistake.

  ‘Do you pray for his soul or mine, dear sister?’

  A voice she heard in her nightmares floated from the shadows of the room. With the light of the candles so close to her, it was difficult to see into the corner of the chamber.

  Near the door to the tunnel.

  Oremund stepped forwards, bringing himself into the circle of light, and bowed to her. ‘Or for your own, to pray God to forgive you for your disobedience?’

  Gillian glanced at the door, wondering if she should call out for help. Before she could, he drew his short sword and blocked her. ‘How did you find it?’ she asked. Only she and her uncle knew of the tunnel.

  He laughed quietly, but no less dangerous for the lack of volume. ‘Did you really think I did not know how you escaped from your chambers? One of your loyal servants sold that information to me. Loyalty is much overrated, you know.’

  Her uncle would never have revealed it to him. Never. So, she’d been betrayed by someone else in the keep, then.

  ‘It worked nicely to let everyone believe that you were a witch like your mother before you,’ he snarled.

  ‘I am no witch, Oremund, and you know that.’

  ‘Ah, but you whore as well as your mother did. I can even smell him on you now.’ He sniffed in a vulgar manner at her. ‘And you swive him like the whore you are.’

  She moved so quickly, it surprised even her, crossing to him in a few steps and reaching up to slap h
im for such an insult. But he was faster and stronger, blocking her blow and grabbing her hand. She tried to pull free, but could not.

  ‘He is my husband,’ she argued.

  ‘A bastard who will soon be buried with those who have tried to stop my plans, sweet Gillian. And I suspect that Lord Raedan will be grateful for the bedplay the bastard has taught you. He has a wider range of tastes for pleasure of the flesh than most and you will likely be more appealing now that you’ve been broken in for him.’ She gasped and tried to pull away again. ‘Virgins can be so tiresome.’

  He released her this time when she tugged and she stumbled across the room. ‘What do you want, Oremund?’

  ‘The same thing I have wanted from you since your whore mother stole it—the gold that should be mine.’

  Gillian rubbed at her wrist and shook her head. ‘It was part of her gift from our father on their marriage.’ She backed away when he lifted his hand. ‘I know you refuse to believe it, but they said vows and she was his wife when she died.’

  He came closer, grabbed her tunic and pulled her to face him then, rage filling his face and pouring from his mouth.

  ‘That whore stole my father from his rightful, legal wife and stole my inheritance from me. Now, if you value your life and that of the Breton you’ve crawled into bed with, you will tell me where it is.’

  If she’d learned only one thing in dealing with her half-brother it was never to try to argue with him when rage controlled him. It led to nothing good and she’d most likely said too much already.

  ‘Do you not think I would tell you if I knew?’ she asked quietly. ‘When you beat me or kept me without food or water? When you killed my servants in front of me? When you forced my uncle to watch as you killed my aunt to try to make him reveal it to you? If I knew, Oremund, I would have saved them from their fates. If there is gold, ’tis not worth the price I have paid for it.’

  Oremund took a step back and released his grasp on her. ‘Tell me where it is, Gillian, and I will never come back to this piss-hole you seem to like so much.’ He took in a deep, rasping breath and let it out. ‘Tell me and you can keep that Breton in your bed.’ He paused and stared at her. ‘Tell me.’

  She was about to deny knowing its location when a commotion began out in the yard. From the orders being called out, it would seem that her husband had arrived.

  ‘You have your inheritance, Oremund. Our father left you everything—his titles, his estates in the north, his belongings. Everything is yours.’ She shook her head then. ‘There is no fortune—if there ever was one. Father said he gave it into my mother’s keeping to safeguard it, for a time of need. He never spoke of it after her death and never revealed its whereabouts to me.’

  ‘It exists, Gillian. It exists and it’s mine. I will find it.’

  ‘I think if it did exist, Father may have used it to pay for the costs of going to war,’ she offered him the same excuse she’d told herself many times.

  As the sounds of men entering the keep grew louder, Oremund glanced at the door to the corridor, the door to the secret passage and then at her, as though gauging the time needed to escape.

  ‘He would not leave his whore nor his bastard daughter a penniless bitch with only this pigsty as her holding unless there was gold to support it—we both know it. Find the gold and return it to me or more will suffer for your stupidity and wilfulness.’

  Without delay, he stepped to the wall, tripped the latch and disappeared into the darkness of the hidden stairway. Just as it closed, Gillian heard Brice’s approach in the hallway.

  How could she keep him from knowing? Should she? Staring at the wall that hid the tunnel, she realised that Oremund or his men could be coming and going when ever they wanted. How they got inside the walls she knew not, but she would not put it past him to have dug his own secret entrances if he knew of their father’s.

  Gillian took several deep breaths, trying to release the tension and fear in her body so that she could greet her husband calmly. She’d told Oremund the truth about the gold—though her father had promised it, she’d never seen it. If her mother had hidden it, the secret had died with her, for Father never mentioned it after her death. And now, if it could be found, it belonged, by law, to her husband.

  If it could be found.

  The soft knock warned her of his entrance and she turned to face him.

  Brice had had a miserable day, ever since realising that his infatuation with his wife was getting in the way of carrying out his duties effectively. He’d done nothing but think about her, as he worked in the keep, in the yard and then when he left to accompany Stephen and some of the men on a search of the forest.

  That had been the worst moment. He could see the expectation of something more in her eyes and he had passed her by without a word. Others called out to her as they rode out, but he did not, fearing his resolve would crumble. And it had; almost as quickly as he’d decided his course with her, he changed it back.

  Then later, sitting in the rain as they planned their search of acres of forest and positioning of guards on the roads to report on any movement of numbers of men, he decided to keep to his new course.

  Now, as he tried to walk up the steps and not rush to her chambers, as he tried to control his need for her, it seemed like a mistake. He opened the door after knocking.

  Something was wrong, terribly wrong. He could see it in her eyes, in the paleness of her face, in the way she stood. He closed the door first and walked over to her slowly.

  ‘Are you well, Gillian?’ he asked, trying to assess her condition. Mayhap some sickness afflicted her? He reached up to touch her cheek and she flinched.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked again when she did not answer.

  ‘Tired, my lord,’ she said quietly. ‘I am tired.’

  Was this her way of showing her displeasure at his behaviour earlier? Was this a wife’s way of responding to something she did not like? ‘My lord?’

  ‘And my courses came today,’ she added, not meeting his gaze.

  He stepped back, wondering what that meant to them. ‘Are you in pain? Do you need Leoma to fetch a potion or something to ease your discomfort?’

  She shook her head, still not looking at him, and walked to the bed. ‘I think I just need to rest.’

  ‘Then seek your rest, Gillian. You did not need to await my return first.’

  She winced then and he wondered if he’d offered some insult to her. But he looked down and noticed that she clasped her wrist in her hand. Brice reached down and lifted her hand closer. Signs of a nasty bruise already marred the skin there.

  ‘How did you injure your wrist?’

  She pulled it back, but she cradled it against herself. ‘I stumbled, my lord. I put my hand out to brace myself and fell against it.’

  His bad day just got much worse; he knew now that he had hurt her with his coldness earlier, but worse still, she was lying to him now.

  It took but a moment’s look at her wrist to see the mark of a hand around it. Someone’s harsh grasp had caused her injury. Someone bigger and stronger and someone bold enough to lay hands on his wife. But how could Oremund, for he was sure it was her brother, have been here and none of his men know of it?

  Brice turned and looked at the wall. He took a step towards it, but was stopped by Gillian’s voice.

  ‘I do not feel well and would seek my bed, if you would allow it?’ she pleaded.

  Accepting it for the diversion it was, Brice nodded, his heart heavy now with suspicion. ‘Do you need assistance?’

  ‘Nay, my lord. Just some rest.’

  He stood nearer the door, aching to go to her, aching to beg her for the truth, but not daring to move. She unlaced her overtunic and pulled it free as she approached the bed. Instead of turning her back and asking for his help in removing the gown beneath it, she climbed on to the bed, favouring her good wrist as she moved.

  ‘I can help you with your gown,’
he offered.

  ‘Nay, my lord,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I am chilled and the extra layer should help to warm me.’

  Because you will not be beside me to do it.

  He heard the words she did not speak, telling him clearly that he was not welcome in her bed. Between the ‘my lords’ and the rejection of his help, Brice knew he would sleep alone this night. Worse than his absence from her bed was that, when given the chance to explain, she’d chosen to lie to him.

  ‘Sleep well, then, lady,’ he said as she settled in the middle of the bed.

  With her back to the wall.

  He did not realise what bothered him until much later, after returning to the hall and being the centre of jesting as the other married men welcomed him into their ranks. Between commiserating about finding himself sleeping alone after only a month of marriage and thinking about her expressions and her actions, Brice finally understood the situation better.

  Gillian’s courses were simply a convenient diversion to keep him at bay. Though he’d initially put some distance between them with his actions, she feared letting him close now.

  Something else had happened in that chamber. Someone had hurt her. But she did not trust him enough yet to share it with him.

  After eating and tarrying a bit longer, he returned to the bedchamber he’d first claimed when they arrived and where he’d slept that first week. It was cold, dark and it held no memories of his wife. He tossed and turned in the large, empty bed for a few hours before realising he could not sleep without her. Finally giving up the fight, he walked down the hallway to her room.

  Brice entered quietly and stood by her bed, watching her sleep for a few moments. He smiled when he heard her arguing with someone in her sleep for it seemed to be her custom and he often listened in on her part of the discussion in her dreams. Thankfully, it was not the night terrors that had struck those times during the fever, when no amount of soothing or cajoling could keep her from believing her death, at Oremund’s hands, was approaching.