The Bride Gift

by Sarah Hegger

  The good father clasped Helena’s face between his palms and kissed her on the forehead. “Well met, and may God bless your union.”

  Her smile froze on her face. Thus far, God didn’t seem to have much to do with her ‘union.’

  “I shall introduce myself.” He folded his hands before him. “I am Crispin, Sir Guy’s brother.”

  Guy had a brother? Of course, if the man actually spoke once in a while, she might have known as much.

  Crispin’s eyes gleamed with warmth. “Your wife is a rare beauty, Guy. You are a lucky man.”

  Helena wanted to squirm at the compliment, but it was not dignified, so she tried to look gracious instead.

  “Aye.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Guy thought she was beautiful. ‘Hah’ to Colin and his assumptions.

  Crispin surveyed the hall at large. “I smelled food. I, for one, am famished.” He paused for a moment. “I am sure you are wondering where I came from.”

  There was a keen intelligence behind his kindly gaze. In the midst of preparing a seat for him at the table, Helena opened her mouth to utter a polite denial and stopped. She really would like to know where he came from.

  “We were following behind Guy and Roger.” Crispin thanked the serving woman placing his meal before him. “They left in rather a hurry as I am sure you can imagine.”

  “All was well?” Guy took his place beside her.

  “As you would expect.” A swift look passed between the brothers before Crispin continued. “The rest are somewhat behind me. I took the opportunity to ride ahead.”

  Guy nodded before returning to his meal.

  He wasn’t looking at her, which made her doubly suspicious. “How many ‘others’ are we speaking of?”

  “Thirty mounted and another fifty on foot.” He shifted on his seat, bringing his hip closer to hers.

  “That is a small army,” she hissed.

  “Aye.”

  “How many more armed men do you expect me to allow into my castle?”

  Guy drew in a slow, careful breath before turning to her. “Our castle, my army.”

  She clamped her mouth shut to stop the hot retort springing to her lips.

  “My brother is not a poet.” The corner of Crispin’s mouth tilted upward as he glanced at Guy.

  “Nay,” Helena agreed.

  “His men are a rough but good lot,” Crispin continued. “You have naught to fear from them.”

  Helena fought to remain even-tempered in front of the priest. “There are just so many of them.” She threw a hard look at the man sharing her trencher. It was wasted on his bowed head. “Are there any more surprises?”

  The bench scraped as Guy got to his feet and made a curt motion with his hand. She deduced he was going outside the keep, presumably to see to his newly arrived men. She returned his gesture with a stiff nod.

  Mayhap they could go the rest of their lives just grunting and making hand gestures. Helena tightened her lips. She had no intention of spending the rest of her life with this speechless brute.

  He’d barely cleared the dais before the noise of people, entering through the screens, once more drew all eyes in that direction.

  “There you are, Guy.” A woman spread her arms wide and beamed a smile. “I am come at last.”

  Helena’s mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut.

  The woman was lovely. Far lovelier than any woman Helena had ever seen. She sent a quick apology to the memory of her sister. Bess had been an angel.

  This woman was a sultry goddess with hair so dark it seemed to absorb all the light in the hall and catch it along the length of a braid that fell past her waist. She was also heavily gravid. A prominent bulge nestled beneath the wine velvet of the woman’s bliaut.

  “What a charming hall.” The woman stopped and turned in a slow circle.

  The newcomer finished her study of the hall and glided toward Guy. “Well met, dearling.” She held out her hands.

  Guy took them and bent his dark head to accept her kiss on his cheek.

  Helena stiffened. A choke of part laughter and part amazement clutched her throat. An air of intimacy clung to the couple. Surely she was mistaken?

  Crispin cleared his throat noisily.

  Guy met his brother’s gaze and even from a distance she sensed the unspoken words between them.

  Guy gestured toward the woman. “This is the . . . er . . . Lady Rosalind du Basson.”

  “Lady Rosalind is an old family friend who wanted to spend her confinement away from court,” Crispin clarified.

  “Verily.” A fine sweat broke over Helena’s skin. She could see the same conclusion reflected on the faces around her. “Pardon me.” The bench scraped on the flags as she hastened to her feet. “I must check . . . pardon.”

  She hurried from the hall, her limbs odd and discordant. Just past the screens and out of view of the hall, she stopped to draw breath. He had brought his whore to her keep. The gall of it churned in her belly.

  The entire assemblage seemed to know what he’d done. Sounds penetrated from the other side of the screens and Helena jerked in reaction. Her hands clawed against her thighs. She had to get out of this keep before she . . .

  She had to get out.

  “I am still not sure why you felt compelled to bring her with us.” Crispin took up the refrain he’d been singing since London.

  Jesu, Guy was tired of hearing it and even more weary of answering it.

  They were alone in the hall. It had emptied like a leaky vessel following Lady Helena’s abrupt departure. Bridget had taken Rosalind off to see her settled, but not before the old woman had given him a look to blister his hide through. She was wroth for her mistress and Guy didn’t blame either of them.

  Lady Helena. He motioned a serving lad to refill his goblet. The boy had best keep the wine coming. It almost numbed the sour twist in his gut.

  “I gave my oath,” he ground out and filled his mouth with wine to stop him from ordering his brother to take his sanctified head out of his arse.

  “You made a mistake,” Crispin responded tartly. “And you will live to rue this decision.”

  Guy wasn’t going to argue this point again. Rosalind had travelled with them and he’d promised her sanctuary. Have done with it.

  “Have you considered what your bride has made of Rosalind?” Crispin persisted.

  Of course, he’d considered it. He’d considered very little else since Helena had rushed from the hall. He was bound, though, by an oath. Rosalind had extracted this damnable promise from him. He couldn’t explain it to his brother because Crispin would just give him a look of pure disgust.

  It was the tears. They destroyed him without fail. Rosalind loved wielding that power over him. She did it purposely and still it got to him. She but wept and he was lost, clay for her to mould.

  “The child is in all likelihood that knight’s with the flaming red hair,” Crispin droned on.

  “Courtenay, you mean. Rosalind claims they have parted.”

  Then Guy clamped his mouth shut. The less he said the better. Words always managed to trip him up. And Rosalind used words against him; talking, talking, talking until his head ached with it. There’d been a time, with his spurs still new and his perceptions not yet jaded, when Rosalind had seemed the lady of his dreams. Fortunately, she’d already been married.

  “You and Rosalind parted ways years ago. And yet . . .” Crispin made an expansive gesture with his hands.

  “There was the one time,” Guy admitted. “I was the worse for drink.” His face heated. Rosalind had been available and familiar. The physical gratification had not been bound in silken skeins of entrapment and obligation, until now.

  “Oh, Guy.”

  Guy tightened h
is fist around his goblet. He would take that foolish night back if he could.

  “You know,” Crispin said, “you are not a stupid man.”

  He would thank his brother for that, but for sure, there was more coming.

  “In fact, you have a keener mind than most, but where women are concerned, you are a complete and utter dolt.” Crispin made a rude noise.

  “This from a monk,” Guy shot back, stung. The unfortunate truth, however, rang in what his brother said.

  “I blame our mother,” Crispin declared.

  “She died giving birth to us.”

  “Precisely.” Crispin rapped his knuckles on the arm of his chair. “And the boor that sired us had the raising of us.”

  He pointed his finger at Guy. “More you than I, and hence the dalliance with Lady Rosalind.” The wheels were obviously turning in his brother’s mind.

  Guy braced for the worst.

  “Which brings to mind,” Crispin continued undeterred, “if you plan to win the day here, you may think of doing something about your general surliness.”

  “I am not surly.”

  Crispin did not deign to reply. The lecture he’d administered earlier over Guy’s lack of introductions still smouldered between them.

  Guy had to concede his brother had the right of it. He’d not behaved well, but Lady Helena had turned to him with accusation in her eyes, and any rational explanation had disappeared. He’d created this problem and was clueless as to how to resolve it.

  Give him an impenetrable keep to conquer, show him an army that outmatched his four to one. Or ten to one, twenty to one. Do not ask me to lisp smooth words to a woman.

  His silence was adding fuel to the fire, but how to explain with words?

  Rosalind was much further along than Guy was given to believe. He was amazed she’d managed to conceal a belly of that size for as long as she had. He would guess her time was not too far off and that made it even less likely that the child was his. Unfortunately, it also became only more apparent that the child couldn’t be her husband’s, either. Du Basson had run out of patience several lovers back.

  Rosalind had long since stopped being his regular lover, and they had become friends, of a sort, that one lapse notwithstanding. And an oath was an oath, however trying.

  “How goes it with Lady Helena?” Crispin asked suddenly.

  Guy sipped his wine. He didn’t think Crispin wanted to hear of his life-endangering case of aching ballocks.

  Now, his wife was wroth and with good reason. He might be a dolt with women, but he’d not earned himself a reprieve any time soon.

  “You could try talking to her,” Crispin drawled. “Instead of just grunting and glowering all the time. You might give a few words a go.”

  Guy glared at his brother. Crispin was the twin gifted with the smooth address. Not he.

  “I cannot,” he said.

  “Thank the Lord you are such a comely looking brute, or you would still be wondering if you needed to stir your ale with that thing in your braies,” Crispin retorted.

  Guy gave a short bark of laughter.

  “Speaking of which . . .?”

  Guy read his brother’s mind as easily as if it were his own. “I am not a savage, Crispin.”

  “Nay.” Crispin grinned. “But you dissemble with such vigour.” He ducked and Guy’s cuff went wide of its mark.

  Chapter 8

  Helena slipped into the woods, moving quickly, choosing a well-trod path through the lighter thicket. It didn’t matter to her that Guy had brought his leman to Lystanwold. It was nothing to her.

  She tripped past young saplings that gave way to towering old giants, aged sentinels on the hillside. The ground sloped downward and she was forced to watch her footing on the damp leaves. Not much sunlight penetrated the tangled canopy and the smell of wet earth hung fecund on the air.

  She despised the knight. She didn’t even accept him as her husband and this should be no more than a trifling inconvenience. The humiliation stung, nothing more. She but needed to get away from all those knowing eyes.

  The path followed a small stream as it widened from a trickle into a steady flow and finally hurtled over the edge of the forest into emptiness. Here, Helena clambered cautiously down the sharp incline beside the fall of water. Over the years, feet had worn an easier path amongst the buried rocks and tree roots. She followed these all the way down to the small, woodland pool.

  My place. She drew in a breath full of the damp, woodsy air.

  She tugged at her laces, shedding clothes onto the dry rocks that edged the pool. She plunged naked into the icy water. It snatched her breath away and bit sharply into her exposed flesh, but Helena blocked her nose and allowed her weight to take her deeper until the top of her head was submerged. Down she plunged until her feet touched the smooth, tumbled rocks at the bottom. With a sharp push, she shot to the surface, sputtering water and blinking her eyes.

  Here, she could think at last. The whispering tumble of the water normally soothed, but today that ease was slow in coming. She cleared her mind. She wouldn’t think of the rat’s nest she had left behind her in the keep. Yet Guy, the woman, Colin, all of them clamoured for attention in her mind.

  The water lapped at her skin as she paddled around the pool. Tipping her head back, the current tugged gently on her hair and wrapped its feathery tendrils all around her. There would be scolding at the castle later when Bridget discovered her wet hair.

  “I thought I might find you here.”

  Helena yelped. She lost her footing and sank beneath the water for a moment before her feet made contact with the bottom again. She came up gasping for breath and shoving wet fistfuls of hair out of her face.

  Her heartbeat stuttered and slowed. “Colin,” she wheezed slightly. “You frightened years off my life.”

  “You are sulking, are you not?” His feet were firmly planted apart on the rock, far away from the water’s edge.

  Her brief moment of solitude popped like a soap bubble. “He humiliated me.” A fresh surge of outrage warmed her body under the chill water. “He brought his whore into my home.”

  Colin cut across her tirade impatiently. “Stop thinking like a child and see this for what it is.”

  “And what is that?” She hated it when Colin condescended to her. He was only a year or two her senior.

  “Heaven-sent.” A beautiful smile broke over his features. “What better distraction than a mistress? Think, Nell.” He winked at her. “While his whore is here, he will not be bothering you.”

  “She is heavy with child, Colin.”

  “And?” Colin crossed his arms and assumed an unbearably superior expression. “Do you think men do not visit their quickening women? You are such a babe, Nell.”

  She squirmed with embarrassment, hating that Colin understood so much more than she did. Their uncle had told him anything he wanted to know. With her, Roger grew tight-lipped and ill at ease.

  “And,” Colin’s eyes gleamed, “she is probably the jealous sort. He would not want to upset his leman in her delicate condition.”

  Helena made a rude snort. “I do not think Sir Guy has any such tender sensibilities.”

  “Then why is she here?” Colin asked. “If he did not care for her or her feelings, then why is she here? He is not stupid, Nell. He knows it will humiliate you and still he brought her here.” He tapped his forehead. “I have thought it all through and there is only one conclusion I can reach.”

  “Which is . . .?” She wanted to slap the smugness from his face.

  “He loves her.”

  Helena shivered. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms to ward off the chill. Deep inside was another cold place. One she didn’t want to visit. “I need my clothes.”

  Colin turned
his back. “Anyway.” He raised his voice above the noise of her splashing out of the pool. “We can turn this situation to our advantage and be rid of Sir Guy by Midsummer’s Day.”

  There were gaps in Colin’s plan so large she could see daylight through them. “Do you even know how to obtain an annulment?”

  “I have an idea.”

  Clearly, Colin strove to evade her question. Her frustration grew as she struggled to think over her dilemma and tug on her chainse at the same time, the fabric clinging to her wet skin. She had only a rather vague idea how one went about such a thing as annulment. Which brought her to another of those missing details; how they were going to get rid of Sir Guy.

  She wriggled to fasten the ties.

  “Nell?”

  “I do not think it will be a simple matter to get rid of Sir Guy.” She twisted about.

  “Nell,” Colin rasped, as Helena wrung the water out of her hair.

  “I—”

  “Nell!”

  “What?” She turned. And her hands flew to her mouth to stop the sharp scream searing the back of her throat. The bliaut dropped from her fingers to the rock.

  A sword was pressed against Colin’s throat, so near to the skin that a small trail of blood snaked down his neck to stain the collar of his tunic. She tracked the gleam of the metal, past the unadorned pommel and into the coldest blue eyes she had ever seen.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to, for the steel at Colin’s neck screamed loudly.

  Her mouth went dry. Words fled from her mind as Guy’s frigid stare transfixed her. He must have heard everything. He would murder Colin for certain.

  “Please—” Helena took a small step forward. “Do not kill him.”

  “Nell,” Colin whimpered.

  “Why?” her husband inquired, as soft as the breeze chilling her skin.

  “Because I ask it.”

  The sword disappeared so quickly she barely discerned the movement. Relief weakened her knees. She stumbled toward her cousin.