Stealing Heaven

by Madeline Hunter

  Nay, she would not. It had nothing to do with Genith’s preferences, however. It never did for women, especially women of their birth.

  Genith was destined for a different marriage, to a different lord, in order to secure a vital alliance for the rebels who flew Llygad ap Madoc’s banner.

  Nesta took Genith in her arms to give comfort and reassurance. The body that she held felt very small and frail. She herself had been just as slight and not much older than Genith when she met King Edward. She had thought herself very mature and worldly then, but the world she knew was privileged and small and based upon songs and tapestries, and the maturity merely an illusion.

  “That you do not care for this man is of no consequence. But what of the next one, Genith? It is a mistake to form your judgments so quickly.” She knew even as she spoke that she could make no difference. There were certain things a woman only learns through experience, no matter how often older voices might try to warn and prepare.

  “I doubt he will be so angry and cruel in appearance and manner. No man could be.”

  She was terribly wrong there, but Nesta did not say so. Marcus might have a harsh quality to him, but she could tell that he was not cruel. Genith had never had to deal with a truly violent man, and Nesta prayed she never would. “There are ways to handle men like Sir Marcus, little sister. My own husband had a temper to match his fiery hair, but with me he learned to be courteous. If the man you marry seems hard, you must soften him.”

  Genith pulled away, and gave the sharp look of a girl who knows very little but thinks she is quite wise. “Soften him with my favors, you mean.” The tone was disapproving. For an instant Nesta saw the pinched face of the pious kinswoman with whom Genith had lived since their father had been disseized.

  “Not with your favors. With your virtue and grace,” Nesta said.

  Her own tone must have conveyed her annoyance, because her sister suddenly looked chagrined. Impulsively, Genith snuggled closer, like a child seeking comfort. The clutching embrace touched Nesta, and nostalgia squeezed her heart. They might have been back in their father’s home again, ten years earlier, when Genith had truly been a child and Nesta had filled the role of mother. She laid her head against the silken hair tucked to her neck.

  “I do not want to talk of husbands,” Genith muttered. “Since this marriage to Sir Marcus will not happen, it does not matter that I did not find him agreeable. It will not be the same when I meet the man I am expected to marry instead, I promise. I will find something to favor in him, as you did when you went to Scotland.”

  Nesta heard resignation mixed with the acceptance. Aye, faced with the inevitable, a woman either finds something to favor or lives in hell. This conversation made her melancholy, and evoked memories of being where her sister was now, dealing with the realities of duty being forced on her.

  She had decided to make the best of her marriage, but the best could be a far cry from the dreams of youth, spun while the world is still fresh and new and full of sparkling light. Sometimes she mourned the smiling innocence of those uncomplicated days, and their bright, vivid emotions. Already Genith’s world was dimming too, and that saddened her so much that her throat burned.

  She gently rocked with her sister in her arms, soothing the fading child. “It will be all right,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to Genith’s head. It was a motherly gesture and tone, but she admitted that she had really been speaking to herself.

  She was letting maudlin emotions overwhelm her, and she forced them under control. It would be all right, but mainly because Genith understood her duty. That superseded everything, most of all the wistful dreams in a girl’s heart.

  Nesta guiltily acknowledged that a part of her was relieved that Genith was growing up, and accepting the ways of the world. Because if a dream should reach out its hand to Genith, Nesta herself would have to prevent her sister from grabbing it.

  Chapter 3

  “So the king’s whore has come to London.” Archbishop Stratford received the news with a resigned shake of the head. His deep sigh exhaled enough breath that a curled parchment began a sleepy roll to his writing table’s edge.

  “Aye, the elder daughter is here,” Marcus confirmed. It annoyed him to hear Stratford call Nesta a whore. After all, there were several stories about that encounter between Nesta and Edward eight years ago. If Llygad ap Madoc had broken with the King over it, rape was more likely, although Marcus did not want to believe that of the King he knew as a friend. Still, Edward had been very young at the time, little more than twenty years old, and very full of himself and his newly acquired power…

  He caught himself, and cut off the heated argument his head was making. Hadn’t he himself referred to her as the King’s whore? What did he care how it had actually been? No matter what the truth, the violation of his hospitality had been enough to send Llygad into the hills.

  Stratford shook his head again. Despite his large-framed, powerful build, he had appeared shrunken and weary when Marcus entered his chamber at Westminster. His thinning grey hair was mussed, as if a hand had scratched at the scalp many times today. Governing the realm in Edward’s absence was not an easy task, Marcus guessed, no matter what skills a man brought to it.

  “Thank the saints that the Queen is in Flanders with her husband,” Stratford said. “We had heard that Nesta was contented to go to the convent after her Scottish husband’s death. We received no word she had left it to journey here.”

  “Actually, she said that she had not been there for some months now.”

  Stratford’s veil of distraction instantly lifted. He pierced Marcus with the shrewd stare of a man who had played many dangerous political games in his life, and survived each time. “So much for the loyalty of a Scottish abbess. Some months, you say? Where has she been?”

  Marcus shrugged.

  Stratford muttered a curse hardly befitting a bishop.

  “She does not appear accepting of this marriage between me and her sister, which is why I have come today,” Marcus said.

  “There is naught she can do about it. Genith will not have the courage to stand against me, once I have her alone.”

  The old resentment about this marriage twisted in the pit of Marcus’s stomach. He had always known that the match was not Genith’s choice, but he could do without it being so baldly stated. He reacted viscerally against the notion of having a woman coerced to his bed. He had seen far too much of that as a boy.

  He suppressed the youthful memories that wanted to emerge, and the reaction itself. This was the way o: such things for a man with his position. He had always known that whatever marriage he made would contain the shadow of it.

  “I gave word to the men at the house to allow neither sister to leave the property until we are done with this,‘ Marcus said.

  “Your caution speaks well for your judgment, but I doubt it was necessary. I do not know how Nesta journeyed from Scotland to London, but I doubt she has the coin to journey back. Nor is there anywhere to take the girl.”

  “She could sell a jewel and get the coin. She could take Genith to her father’s rebels.”

  “She has no jewels or property of value. They were taken by her husband’s son by the first marriage, and the little remaining was required by the convent for her place there. And ladies do not live in the forest with wild men.”

  Stratford said it confidently, but something in the reference to the rebels obviously provoked his mind. He began absently handling the parchments lying in front of him, fingering their edges with a distant expression in his eyes.

  “You brought word when you arrived from the marches that their raids had ceased since midsummer,” he said.

  “There has been little trouble. So little that some of the border lords think they have disbanded.” It was one reason why the expectation that he crush those rebels had not concerned him overmuch. Despite Llygad’s attempts to rouse Wales to his banner, this rebellion had always been more a nuisance than a threat, the most rec
ent in a long line of minor insurgencies in a land well conquered by the King’s grandfather.

  Shrewd lights entered Stratford’s eyes. “We do not think it likely that they will disband. If they did not last year after Llygad’s death, they will not now. It has become a way of life for them, and an excuse to act like thieves. However, things have been too quiet in the west. The Welsh chieftains have been too accommodating. No complaints. No demands. A very odd silence has descended.”

  Marcus knew of the peace and silence. Like the other marcher lords, he had been enjoying the respite from petty jealousies and switching loyalties among the Welsh chieftains who still held status and lands, albeit with England’s permission.

  Stratford continued, thinking aloud. “With the King out of the country, and so many of his barons with him, if anyone thought to join with these thieves and make a move, it would be now.”

  “They would never follow Carwyn Hir. He took Llygad’s place upon his death, but he is not of princely blood, not uchelwyr. If he approaches Welsh leaders for an alliance, I cannot see that he would be welcome.”

  “What if someone of Llygad’s blood spoke in his name? Or Carwyn spoke in hers?”

  Marcus saw where Stratford was going. He suddenly remembered the warning of danger in the garden.

  “I wonder where Nesta has been these last months,” Stratford mused, tapping his fingers on his table. “I should follow my instincts and keep her in close confinement here, but that will never do. Edward would have my head if he learned I had imprisoned her without any evidence.”

  So, the King still lusted for Nesta, or at least Stratford thought so. Marcus did not like the implications of that.

  The archbishop became the image of a man who had made a decision. “We will make this marriage tomorrow, then you will take both sisters with you back to Anglesmore. That way you can keep an eye on Nesta, and see that she causes no mischief. Better to have her there, than wandering around God knows where. If any of her father’s men seek to use her, you will know of it. If she is in league with them, you might even learn their movements and plans if she is in your household.”

  Stratford’s strategy paralleled the King’s, which Marcus had learned about in the private letter from Edward that came with the official one regarding the marriage. The King also wanted Nesta at Anglesmore. The King had written friend to friend, and spoken of making amends and finding her a place. Now Marcus suspected the King had other intentions as well if, as Stratford indicated, he still held affection for Nesta.

  The notion of that made his distaste for this marriage twist again. Bad enough to be bound to a woman coerced. Worse yet to have the sister he really wanted ever present. A living hell waited if the King visited and expected to tryst with his old lover.

  If she was willing, he would have no choice except to permit it. If she was not…

  And all the while he would be expected to discover if Nesta plotted against the realm.

  If he learned that she did, he would be the man who had to bring her to judgment.

  “The ceremony will be tomorrow,” Marcus explained. “I hope you will both come.”

  “Of course. I have had a new surcotte made,” Joan said. “You are contented with this marriage, Mark?”

  She persisted in calling him by his boyhood name, even though he never used it anymore. He had repudiated it, just as he had turned his back on the powerless youth who had been called that. Since taking his place as Lord of Anglesmore he had been Marcus, just as his father had been.

  “Well contented. I have finally met her. She is beautiful and modest and obedient, and rich lands and the King’s favor come with her. What more could I want?”

  The day had turned warm, and they sat in the garden of Joan’s London house while the evening light waned. The table between them held three small clay statues. Joan had made them, and now they dried so that she could take them to a kiln. Down by the far wall of the garden, Joan’s husband Rhys played with their two youngest children.

  Marcus glanced to the house. It was of good size, as befitted a man who was a principal builder to the crown. Marcus himself had lived in this house for a few months as a youth, before Anglesmore had been restored to him and Joan had married the man who had given them shelter. A house too wide for one person, Joan had called it back then. She and Rhys had filled it to the point where it bulged with family and love.

  He looked across at his sister. She was watching her husband and children. Tenderness veiled her expression. Marcus instantly experienced the jumble of reactions that he felt whenever he saw that look on her. His heart filled with happiness for her, but also resentment and even jealousy.

  The latter emotions were not worthy of him, but he could not deny they were there. They had been in his soul since he had learned which life Joan had chosen. As a youth they had ruled him, and kept him from visiting her when he came to London. The estrangement had lasted years.

  In part he had avoided coming because this house and neighborhood reminded him of the bad years after his father died, when Anglesmore had been lost and he and Joan had been reduced to poverty. Mostly, however, it had been anger at Joan that had kept him away.

  Finally, he had been forced to come. Addis de Valence, the lord who served as Anglesmore’s warden after Marcus got his place back, had shown no inclination to relinquish his hold when Marcus came of age. Resentment at that had led him to confront Addis.

  “You should have stood aside months ago. Why do you delay, and keep one hand on my shoulder?”

  “I am waiting for you to show that you are a man.”

  The insult had been infuriating. “Meet me with swords and I’ll damn well prove that I am a man if you have any question about it.”

  “I do not speak of skill at arms. There is a woman in London who waits for you to visit her. Whenever you journey there, she spends her days listening for your bootstep. A man will set aside whatever anger keeps him from that house. It is the boy in you who cannot reconcile what happened, and what she sacrificed, and how she then rejected all that she had fought to regain.”

  And so he had come to this house, and was glad that he did. But the anger still lived in his gut. He was only alive because of Joan. He only had Anglesmore because of her. She had slaved for three years to get their place back after they lost it. And then, at the moment of victory, she had walked away from it, from him, because of a man.

  “I am glad that you have met her, and that you are pleased. I pray that you find love with her, Mark. It is worth far more than all the lands in Wales.” Joan no longer watched her husband. Warmth still suffused her expression, only now it was for him, her brother.

  He did not respond. For one night, after some kisses in a garden, he had dared to wonder if he might know what Joan hoped him to find. It had been an exhilarating, but childish, fantasy. The Lord of Anglesmore was born for other things. Duty called.

  Joan caught Rhys’s eye and gave a little signal with her hand. Rhys nodded, and rose from the ground where he wrestled with his two little boys. The children clung to his tall body as he stood, hanging from his shoulders and strong arms. With laughs and gentle hands, he pried them loose and lowered them to the ground.

  “Come with me, brother,” Joan said. “We have something to show you.”

  Marcus accompanied Joan over to a mason’s workbench. A tall form stood on it, shrouded in canvas. It had been there every time that Marcus had visited since he resumed coming here four years ago. Since Rhys never seemed to be working on it, Marcus assumed it was an abandoned project, such as happens when a man moves on to other things. Rhys Mason no longer carved stone but designed great buildings for the King.

  Rhys joined them and pulled off the canvas. A gleaming statue of Saint George was unveiled, its face bearing the likeness of the last Lord of Anglesmore. The marble had a slightly yellow hue, giving the face even more realism.

  “It took many years, since I have other duties now,” Rhys explained as he glossed his fingertips
over a section of carved armor, his blue eyes and sensitive touch checking the surface. “Joan helped me rough it out, since my hand by itself does not have the strength for that. She also did some of the work on the face, since she knew your father’s countenance.”

  Marcus gazed at that face, so real in the dimming light, so similar to the one of his boyhood memories. His last sight of it had been when it wore the mask of death, but Joan had shown their father years younger, and alert and alive.

  His throat thickened. He had requested this of Joan years ago, but thought it had been forgotten. He pictured his sister and her husband working on it all this time, bit by bit.

  “It is perfect,” he said. “Weak hand or not, you have not lost your skill, Rhys.”

  “Our skill. It is not just my craft here.”

  “Now we have to find a way to get it to Anglesmore,” Joan said.

  “I can help there,” a new voice answered.

  Marcus turned to the voice, and the young man carrying a sack who came toward them from the garden’s back portal. “Welcome, David. Come and see it.”

  David de Abyndon examined the statue with keen interest. His expression was much as Rhys’s had been, and he even touched the surface the same way. “So, it is finally done. A great achievement. Too bad it will stand in an obscure chapel on the Welsh marches where no one will see it.”

  “I will see it,” Marcus said.

  “Well, if that is to be its lonely fate, so be it. I will be taking a wagon in that direction soon, and can haul it to Anglesmore. I doubt that you will want to be delayed by such a burden when you bring your bride home.”

  “My messenger found you then?”

  “Tomorrow, he said. I will be there. You do not waste any time, since a day ago you had not even seen this girl. I assume that now you have, and found her very appealing if you are so impatient. Her recovery from that illness was sudden.”