by Merry Farmer
The pause that followed her words didn’t bode well. “Aubrey….” Neither did the way he spoke her name.
She sat in the middle of the bed and pulled the coverlet to her chest. “What?”
“This isn’t a guest room.”
She blinked once. “No.”
“We’re sharing a room and this bed.”
“No!”
“You don’t have a choice in the matter.” His sullen flare of anger almost made her feel normal again.
She threw the coverlet off and tried to summon the energy to stand. “No. This is your room and your bed, so fine. I will not sleep here. I will not sleep with you. I will sleep in another room.”
He blocked her from getting up. “I am not referring to…” she glared at him, “the marriage bed,” he finished.
She would have laughed at the embarrassed flush on his cheeks under other circumstances. “Then I will sleep in this room and you can sleep somewhere else.”
“No.” He planted his hands on her shoulders.
“Yes.” She shrugged them off.
“No, Aubrey, and that’s final. We share a room. We sleep in the same bed.”
“You will not touch me.” She pointed a finger at him.
“No, I will not touch you!”
She opened her mouth to argue but shut it with a confused frown. He was agreeing with her.
“What kind of a monster do you think I am?” he asked her, then snapped, “Don’t answer that.” She was so tempted to find humor in the situation that it exhausted her. “I will not touch you when you have a dangerous wound in your side.”
“A wound that you put there,” she muttered, glancing at the pillow and deciding it was the only thing in the world she wanted in that moment.
“Yes, a wound I put there, and for that I am more sorry than you can know.”
She wanted to argue with him but the pillow called to her. She lowered herself to it with a sigh. “I can’t, Crispin, I just can’t.”
“Can’t what?” He sat on the end of the bed.
“Sleep with you.”
He sighed and rested his back against the bedpost, rolling his eyes. “What, too proud to share a bed with someone? Or are you afraid that I might decide to rape you in the middle of the night.” She flushed with shame and buried her face in the pillow. He dropped his arms in frustration. “Do you really think I would?”
She wanted to spit at him and tell him yes. But even in her anger she couldn’t convince herself that he was capable of that. Countless times in the past he had been alone with her, close to her. If he had wanted to take her by force then he could have done it a hundred times over. “I see your point.”
“I’m glad,” he huffed out a breath. “I will sleep on the side of the bed nearest to the wall. You will sleep closer to the door. If I try anything inappropriate you will be able to escape before I harm your virtue.”
Her eyes snapped up, blazing with insult as they met his smirk. “Now you’re just teasing me.”
“What? Is your virtue not intact?”
She could see in the flash of his eyes that he was having a go at her but she was too livid not to take the bait, “Of course it’s intact!” She kicked him and bit the pillow at the pain her outburst caused.
“That solves it.” His voice was so serious that she knew he was laughing at her. “Remember, I’ve gone toe-to-toe with the Bandit. I’m sure if I so much as looked at you wrong you would knock me flat.”
She cursed herself for wanting to laugh at the scenes his words brought to her mind. “I would kill you.”
Heavy silence followed. She ground her head into the soft pillow, shaping it so that she could sleep. She shut her eyes and hoped he would take the hint and leave. He slid closer to her and pulled the covers up over her shoulders instead, then whispered, “Aubrey, I swear to you on everything that I hold sacred, I swear to you that I will not touch you until you ask me to.”
She broke into an sweat at those words, that promise. Until. It implied that someday she would ask. She struggled against that. But she couldn’t deny that the idea of intimacy with Crispin had crossed her mind once or twice in unwelcome daydreams, and it hadn’t been entirely horrific.
“Thank you, Crispin.” She kept her eyes closed, her face turned away. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes until she was past the sickening feeling of ‘until’. “Now for God’s sake let me sleep.”
He stood. She settled herself on the right side of the bed so that her wound didn’t sting. He walked to the door and opened it with a creak. She let out the breath she had been holding, trying not to recognize how disappointed she was that he had left.
Chapter Fifteen
The forest bled cold and empty into Ethan’s soul. He had retreated to its dark, hidden depths, ostensibly so that they wouldn’t be found while he searched for what to do next. Not only had he lost Aubrey, he had missed the Council of Nobles. The Council hadn’t seemed important on the day of the wedding, but after a night sleeping out under the canopy of forest branches he woke sick with regret. He had lost his chance.
As the first rays of light were cutting through the branches he rose and roused his men. “Get up.” He shook Toby’s shoulder, kicking Jack in the back with the side of his foot. “Get up. We’ve got work to do.” Jack rolled over and ignored him. Ethan had to shake and kick him several times before he stirred.
“Oy! What’s so bloody important that we have to wake up at the bloody ass-crack of dawn, mate?”
“We’re meeting Matlock and the others on the road.” There was still time to regain what he had lost.
They rode toward the north road as morning spread through the forest. As vast as the forest was, it wasn’t uninhabited. The unbeaten paths and back corners of the woods was home to the dregs of the shire. Ethan noted them all: the rag-tag wanderer who slept on as they passed, the small band of men who darted for cover, hiding their faces, the gap-toothed woman who grinned at them and hitched her skirts up. They were there to hide, the same as he was.
He passed them all without a word until he crossed paths with a filthy, dark-haired young man with wild blue eyes. He pulled his horse to a stop and motioned for the others to stop as well. The young man met Ethan’s stare without flinching.
“I know you.” He dismounted.
He was no more than a boy. His mouth split into something that could have been a snarl or a grin. “You do.”
The boy wore the same tattered tunic and ragged chausses as he had worn the night he had broken away from him and Tom when they tried to secure him in Morley’s barn. The hair on the back of Ethan’s neck stood up. “I’d have thought that a man accused of murder would run further than Derbywood.”
The young man said nothing. Ethan crossed his arms and appraised the boy from head to toe. He had lost weight. His face was sunken and his eyes glazed with hunger.
“What’s your name?” An idea took shape in Ethan’s mind.
“Roderick.”
Ethan nodded. “Hungry, Roderick?” The young man nodded. Ethan smiled at him and took a step forward. “If you join us and do as I say you’ll have food.”
“What? Sir! No!” Tom protested, drawing surprised glances from Toby and Jack. “He’s a murderer!”
“He’s a starving boy. Any lord worth his salt knows that he has to keep his people fed.”
“My lord, you are not responsible for him.” Toby kicked his horse forward.
Ethan ignored his man. He had lost his chance to oppose Buxton at the Council but that didn’t mean he had to accept his fate. If he couldn’t defy Buxton with words then he would do it with numbers. “Will you submit to my leadership?” he asked the emaciated young man. Roderick nodded. Ethan smiled. “Good. Walk behind us and make sure we’re not being followed.”
“How can you trust him?” Tom whispered as Ethan remounted his horse. He glanced to where Roderick had skittered behind them, eyes alert.
“Give a man trust and he’ll be trustworthy,” was
all Ethan offered. He nudged his horse forward.
“What a pile of rubbish,” Jack muttered to his brother, earning a bitter scowl. “Oy, what’s gotten up your backside?” Jack’s scowl deepened.
“You never know when to quit, do you?” Tom shook his head in disgust. Before Jack could reply Tom kicked his horse to catch up to Ethan’s side.
They reached the road as the sun lifted into the wispy clouds on the horizon and slowed their horses to a stop. Any one of the nobles he had spoken with in the previous months could take this road on their way home, but it was a direct route for Lord Stephen of Matlock. All they had to do was wait.
By the time they saw a large retinue coming along the road, the carriage draped with Matlock’s colors and sigil, Ethan was too impatient to wait for the rest of his men. He kicked his horse forward to intercept them.
Matlock rode out to meet him a few yards from the road.
“Matlock.” He nodded as the tall, graying noble approached.
“Windale.” The reply was curt.
“What news from the Council?”
Matlock met the question with a short laugh. “You would know if you had kept your promises.”
Ethan didn’t flinch. “I am sorry that I wasn’t there. I should have been. What was the outcome?”
“Buxton asked that taxes be raised and that we be diligent in collecting them. We agreed. Business as usual.”
Ethan shifted atop his horse. “And?”
Matlock let out a breath. “And we are all to do our utmost to show our support for our royal protector, Prince John, when he arrives.”
“Prince John?” Ethan started. “When he arrives?”
For a moment Matlock looked at Ethan in surprise. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?” Ethan turned to look at his men as they caught up. They all looked baffled, even Jack who liked to pretend that he knew everything.
Matlock studied Ethan with a frown. “The war will be over soon and Buxton wants Derbyshire to show its loyalty to the royal family in no uncertain terms. There’s to be a week-long faire with the prince in attendance on the last day.”
“He wants to show Prince John he’ll support a coup,” Ethan glared.
Matlock shrugged. “He could mean that. Or he could mean sacrificing virgins on the altar at the full moon to ensure royal prosperity. You know how Buxton is. And without Huntingdon there to keep his lid on he was in rare form.”
“Oh yeah? What’d he do?” Jack blurted.
Matlock sniffed and turned up his nose at Jack. “He was in rare form.” He glanced to Ethan. “You are not the only one upset by Huntingdon’s recent nuptials.”
Ethan’s heart and stomach went cold at Matlock’s accusation. “I should have been there.” He didn’t know if he meant Derby or Windale.
“There was nothing you could have done.” Matlock’s answer fit both situations. “He had more guards than usual around the castle, in the Great Hall. He was expecting you, and I believe he was disappointed when you didn’t show.”
“Well, I promise you this much,” Ethan spoke as much to the fates as to Matlock, “I’ll not disappoint him again.”
For a week after the wedding Aubrey slept. The burning pain in her side had lessened, but the leaden weight in her heart hung twice as heavily. Each time she awoke, whether it was light or dark, Crispin was somewhere in the room, sitting in his chair staring out the window, working with a stack of papers at a small table, asleep in the bed next to her.
The first time she discovered him asleep beside her she was tempted to throw off the coverlet and run for the door. She expected him to be inches away, eyes open in the dark, breathing down her neck. Instead he was curled at the far edge of the bed, back to her, black hair tousled on the pillow. He was tense even in slumber and she imagined that one tiny tap would send him crashing over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. She’d found him in that position in the middle of more than one night.
One morning he wasn’t there. The morning sunlight filtered through the bedroom window as she lay on her back with her eyes still closed willing the pain to return and remind her of how her heart was supposed to feel. She heard movement in the room and frowned. With a reluctant sigh she opened her eyes.
The servant who had reminded her so much of Toby busied herself at the far side of the room near the window brushing out her gowns. Aubrey blinked and sat up as quickly as she dared. “Where’s Cr-” She clamped her mouth shut.
The maid turned to her, eyebrows shooting up as a dazzling smile spread across her full lips and rosy cheeks. “It’s about time you woke up in earnest.” She lay the dress she had been brushing over the small table and hurried to the side of the bed, adding a quick, “My lady. Sorry.”
Aubrey stared at the beautiful young woman, mouth open. “Um. Oh. No, it’s okay. You don’t have to ‘my lady’ me.”
“Actually, I do, my lady.” The grin that brought flecks of light into the woman’s large brown eyes made Aubrey want to giggle. “Sir Crispin has appointed me your lady’s maid.”
“Oh.” Aubrey fought the flutter in her chest as she pushed the bedcovers off and swung her feet around to the floor. She tested her weight before standing. A dull ache throbbed in her side but it was nothing compared to the pitiful weakness in her limbs. She glanced to her maid before throwing aside modesty and lifting her nightgown over her head. The maid had to help her. Aubrey untied the bandage around her middle and peeled it away from her wound. She sighed and slumped her shoulders. A thick, crusty scar ran from her ribs to her hipbone on her left side, the flesh surrounding it pink but calm.
“The wise woman, says you had a lucky escape, my lady.” The maid returned with a bowl of scented water and armful of towels.
“She does, does she?” She had escaped nothing. The maid helped her to bathe and replace the bandage over the healing wound. All the while Aubrey shot nervous glances to the door, dreading the possibility that Crispin would return when she was naked. She scolded the butterflies in her stomach at the thought and bullied them back into silence.
“You’re Toby’s sister, aren’t you?” She made conversation to distract her rebellious thoughts.
“I am, my lady, Joanna,” she grinned. “Do you know my brother?”
“I do. We’ve been on a few adventures together.” She grinned at the memory of the dungeon escape.
Joanna took the wet rag from Aubrey, handing her a towel. “Is he still following Lord Ethan around like a puppy?”
Aubrey blinked at the woman’s tone. She would have expected one of Ethan’s servants to speak of him with respect, with love, but Joanna shook her head as if he were a disobedient child. “Didn’t you see them at the wedding?”
Joanna’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and she dropped her arms to her side. “I was in the kitchen. Toby was at the wedding?”
“He … he tried to stop it.” She swallowed over the tightness in her throat and the hollowness of the memory.
When she glanced up, curious at Joanna’s silence, the woman stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the ceiling and biting her lip as she shook her head. “He’d drown himself in the fish pond if Lord Ethan told him to.”
Aubrey’s jaw dropped. “But … Ethan is your master!”
Shock washed over her at Joanna’s merry peals of laughter. “Sure, if riding a fine horse and having a pretty smile makes a man someone’s master.”
“But he loves Windale! He’s trying to get it back. He was going to call for a vote at the Council of Nobles, challenge Buxton’s authority to give the land to Crispin.”
“He can’t do that!” Joanna blanched. “It would be…. All the work of the last years…. Does Sir Crispin know about this?” Aubrey opened her mouth to reply but the woman charged on with, “He can’t just march in here and destroy everything we’ve worked so hard for!” Joanna wrung the rag in her hands and paced. “Maybe if we petitioned the prince to stop it.”
“What?”
�
��If the people of Windale went to the prince on behalf of Sir Crispin.”
“What!”
“You can’t let Lord Ethan do this!” The anxious fury in Joanna’s eyes as she clutched the towel froze Aubrey.
Maybe she was still asleep and dreaming the whole conversation. Nothing she was hearing from Joanna fit with what she had believed to be true for so long. Forget the pain in her side. It was her mind that hurt now. “I think … I think I’m going to need help dressing.”
“Which one of your kirtles would you prefer to wear?” Joanna’s voice was laced with mock cheer as she forced herself away from the volatile talk.
Aubrey glanced at her garments spread across the table and chest. “The black one.” The last time she had worn it was when she was in mourning for her father. It seemed appropriate to wear it now with her heart and mind in such turmoil. She pressed her hand to her forehead and winced.
Crispin was striding up from the mill when he saw Joanna assist Aubrey through the front door of the manor and into the sunlight. He stopped, heart leaping in his chest, then quickened his steps. Her skin was pale against the black kirtle she wore, but as he approached her eyes flashed. She was already in a temper about something. He wanted to laugh in relief.
“Aubrey.” He nodded as he offered his arm to her. Joanna curtsied and fled into the house.
“Crispin,” she mumbled. She glared at his arm, flinching her hand to it then dropping it to her side only to reach for it again. He fought not to smile as he closed his hand over hers and lead her towards the oak.
“I have news for you, from Coventry.” He ignored whatever pleasantries he was supposed to make.
“What news?” Her hand squeezed his arm.
“Your friends returned safely to their convent. Sister Bernadette has been treated at the hospital and deemed fit.” He’d been waiting a week while she healed to give her the news. He had been waiting a week for a lot of things.