Dreams of Lilacs

by Lynn Kurland

  Humbert’s smile faded. “That, too, my lord, if you must know. Though ’tis cheering to see you here, isn’t it?”

  It was a damned sight more cheering that being limited to looking at the canopy of his bed, though he supposed he would do well to keep that thought to himself.

  “It is,” he agreed simply.

  “Though I am curious as to why you wanted to meet here and not in your hall.”

  “Breath of fresh air,” Gervase said succinctly. And fewer ears listening from the shadows, which was something he supposed he didn’t need to say. “Anything I should know?”

  Master Humbert proceeded to give him a list he tried to pay appropriate heed to. Truly, he did. Could he be faulted if he found it difficult to concentrate on the pedestrian task of running an estate the size of a small country when he had other things that puzzled him?

  Who was she?

  He wasn’t entirely sure Master Humbert wasn’t still talking when he set aside his cup and prepared to leave.

  “Lord Gervase?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Shall I bring you the rest of the tidings later? To the keep?”

  Gervase nodded, then paused. He wasn’t sure how to ask the question without attaching more significance to it than he wanted to, but he had to know before the woman in his hall made him daft.

  “A final question,” he said.

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Gervase chewed on his words for a moment or two. “Have you heard of anyone missing a servant?”

  Humbert blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “A servant, man. A wench who goes about the kitchen scrubbing floors and making sausage.”

  Humbert laughed a little. “Aye, I knew what they did. I just wondered why you were curious. Did you lose one?”

  “Nay, I didn’t,” Gervase said. “I was just curious.”

  “I haven’t heard of anyone having lost a serving girl, but I could ask, if you like.”

  Gervase shook his head. “I’m not that curious. ’Twas nothing more than idle talk in the kitchens, you know.” He rose and put his right hand down on the back of his chair to steady himself without thinking beforehand what it would cost him. He gritted his teeth for a moment or two, then smiled at his forester. “I’ve business back at the hall. Come to me on the morrow, perhaps.”

  “As you wish, my lord. Safe home, as always.”

  Gervase ignored that, because things like that made him feel as if Fate were watching him far too closely. He wasn’t altogether certain that Joscelin hadn’t said the same thing to him at some point before his accident. It would have been convenient if he could have remembered the events leading up to it, but he couldn’t and there was nothing to be done about that. He was perhaps in his own way missing as many memories as that poor daft wench back in the castle, sweeping his floors and helping his brothers with sums that even he had to think about for a moment or two.

  He nodded to Master Humbert, then turned and left the common room with as much confidence in his step as he could muster. He supposed he couldn’t be blamed if he had to pause several times between the door of the hall and the village stables. His meal had been hard on his belly—

  Only he hadn’t eaten anything, he supposed.

  He swung up onto his horse—that poor old horse who seemed not to feel the indignity of being all Gervase could manage—then nodded for Aubert and the lads to begin the journey home. He would have far preferred to sit still and try to manage his pain before he wept, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t going to get any better. There was something to be said for simply riding into the storm, as it were.

  He wasn’t sure how long it took them to reach the keep. He was simply glad to see it rising up in the distance. That hadn’t always been his reaction to the sight of his home, to be sure. He’d been scarce three winters when his mother had died and his father remarried with unseemly haste. A large succession of half siblings had then arrived. The boys had never treated him as anything but a brother, but he couldn’t say the same for his stepmother. She had barely tolerated him, though he couldn’t have said why. Perhaps she resented not only his father’s affection for him, but his own place in the house of Seger. At least her lads hadn’t possessed any of her less desirable traits. After all, ’twas Joscelin and Guy who had put out the flames and saved not only him but their hall. He wasn’t sure he could ask for more loyal siblings than that.

  He dismounted in the stables, handed his reins to the same stable lad he’d relinquished his horse to almost a se’nnight ago after rescuing his scullery maid—and had it been that long?—and was pleased to see the lad looked hardly troubled at all by Gervase’s presence. Perhaps things were improving.

  He left the stables and walked back up the way to the great hall.

  Or at least he did for a score of difficult paces before he saw something that forced him into a stumbling run before he knew what his body intended.

  He managed to remove the offending man from the woman the bastard had just slapped before the brute could hit her again. He overbalanced and fell against the wall of his keep thanks to the effort, but he supposed that was a happy bit of good fortune because he took the man with him.

  It was Coucy’s man, the one who had assaulted his rescued gel in the kitchens.

  He stepped away, then backhanded the fool with his good hand. The rather heavy sound of cheek against stone was particularly satisfying.

  Coucy’s guardsman’s hand was on his sword, but it fell away when he realized whom he was facing. Gervase looked at Aubert.

  “Take him to the dungeon.”

  Aubert nodded and two of the lads took the offender away with as much gentleness as Gervase would have used himself in their place, which was exactly none. He looked at the woman in front of him to judge the damage.

  She was clutching the front of her gown together, which told him two things. First, someone had obviously found her something womanly to wear. Second, based on the red handprint on her cheek and the tears standing in her eyes, she had spent more time in the company of a knave than he might have preferred. He took off his cloak, then pulled her away from the wall and swept it around her shoulders. He helped her lean back against the wall where he thought she might be more comfortable while he shouted at her.

  “Where,” he asked as calmly as possible, “are your guardsmen?”

  “I told them to stay inside,” she said, her voice trembling badly.

  “Why?” he asked. It was such a reasonable question and he asked it with hardly a raising of his voice. Hardly.

  “Because I was just coming outside to see if there were any flowers blooming in that patch of dirt there outside the hall door. It seemed a poor use of their time, don’t you think?”

  He had to admit that a year ago he would have thought the same thing, though he was hardly going to say as much to the trembling woman in front of him.

  “That lad was lying in wait for me, I believe,” she continued. “In the shadows there outside the door.”

  Gervase exchanged a look with Aubert, who stepped back a pace or two to impart an edifying suggestion to a man who then ran off quickly toward the hall. Perhaps Coucy’s man’s journey to the dungeon would meet with a few unexpected bumps along the way. That was always a bit difficult to predict in these circumstances.

  He turned back to the woman in question and felt fury sweep through him again. That someone should have laid a hand on—

  “You will not strike me.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  She lifted her chin. “You will not strike me, sir.”

  “Strike you,” he mouthed, then he cleared his throat. “Strike you? Daft wench, I’ve a mind to take my blade to you!”

  He said that with enthusiasm. It was entirely possible that he shouted it. He was so turned about and his leg so on fire, he honestly couldn’t have said what he’d done. He curled his right fist into a ball and rested it against the stone, leaning on it to tak
e some of the pressure off his leg.

  Two of his younger guardsmen came rushing out of the hall, men that should have known better than to be led about by a wench, no matter how beautiful she might be. He supposed those were apologies on their lips, but he cut them off with a sharp motion of his good hand. He looked at Aubert.

  “Take them into the lists and kill them.”

  “What?” his servant who couldn’t possibly be that exclaimed. “You cannot be serious!”

  He glared at her. “You, mistress,” he said in a low voice, “are one word from finding yourself sharing their fate.”

  “But I told them to stay behind!”

  “And for that, they will die—”

  She put her hand on his arm. It was only because he was already in pain that it fair brought him to his knees, no other reason. By the saints, he was a score and eight. He could boast of conquests all over France. Whether or not he had actually made those conquests was perhaps beside the point. His reputation for wenching, his desirability as a lover, his bloody endless coffers of gold that hadn’t mattered a damn bit because his face and form had taken the day, every day, for as long as he could remember—

  And now to be undone by a scullery maid?

  He pushed away from the wall and pointed a withered finger at her.

  “You, be silent.”

  She stepped in front of her guardsmen. “I will not let you slay them.”

  He took her by the arm and pulled her close where he could bend his head and whisper in her ear.

  “If you have any sense at all,” he murmured, “you will cease this instant with making me look weak in front of my men.”

  She looked up at him.

  He suppressed the urge to clap his hand over his eyes to spare what was left of his wits any further destruction. If he did nothing else that day—or perhaps over the next fortnight, perhaps longer if it seemed necessary—he had to get her out of his hall. He might have to find a name for her first, but, aye, she had to go. If not, she was going to be the death of something. Him, his good sense, his ability to move from one end of the day to the other without spending the bulk of that day wondering how in the hell a serving wench could be so damned beautiful.

  Perhaps she was a faery. He didn’t believe in faeries as a general rule, but he thought he might have to revisit the possibility of them very soon. It seemed a far better use of his time than to fight the urge to pull the woman standing so close to him he could feel her breath on his neck close, wrap his arms around her, and keep her safe.

  By the saints, he didn’t even know the girl. She could have been full of shrewish and nasty humors, spreading grief and destruction wherever she went. She had obviously cast some sort of unholy spell over her guardsmen.

  That brought him back to where he had been, industriously chastising her for making him look weak in front of men who were obviously just as overcome by the fairness of her face as he was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said very quietly. “That was badly done.”

  “Harrumph,” he said, because it was all he could manage.

  She stepped away from his hand on her arm, which he didn’t care for particularly, then turned and looked at the young knights who were standing there looking as if the blades had already gone into their bellies.

  “I apologize to you both,” she said without hesitation. “I shouldn’t have asked you to ignore the task you were given.”

  “And they were fools to listen to a mere serving wench,” Gervase added, because the two fools quaking in front of him were directly responsible for the terror he’d felt at the sight of Coucy’s little sod assaulting the woman in front of him. He looked at Aubert. “Help them understand to whom they will be listening from now on. Don’t spare any effort in your instruction.”

  Aubert merely walked away without comment. The two young knights hastened after him, which Gervase supposed said something about their characters. He had the feeling they would be spending the next fortnight in the infirmary, recovering from their instruction, which was likely too kind a fate for them.

  He had to simply look up at the sky for several minutes until he had control over himself. What he wanted to do was first do damage to the two fools who had allowed themselves to be led about by a ring through their noses, then he wanted to take Coucy’s man and beat him to a bloody pulp. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any shape to do either.

  “I apologize, Lord Gervase.”

  He looked at the girl in front of him. Obviously she thought his fury burned brightly toward her still. He supposed it wouldn’t do him any good to admit what he was thinking, so he frowned a bit more at her lest she think she had the upper hand.

  Frowning was a good way to keep from gaping, he supposed. He also suppressed the urge to shake his head in wonder. Was it possible this one was a servant? If it had been merely the fairness of her face that was so unusual, perhaps he would have assumed she was an oddity, a rare flower planted in common ground, a girl whose father must have lost many nights’ sleep fretting over what would become of her, but she was canny, intelligent, and unintimidated by his sour self. Remarkable.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Did he touch you?”

  She hesitated. “He tried to kiss me, but I avoided that. And most everything else.”

  He started to shout at her, but he realized that she was on the verge of some sort of womanly something. He did his best to suppress his alarm. He was accustomed to ladies of breeding and their schemes. The truth was, there wasn’t a lady of breeding that he’d encountered more than once who hadn’t been as ruthless in her own sphere as he was in his.

  But a tenderhearted serving wench?

  The saints preserve him, he was in trouble. Perhaps ’twas time he put her back to work and escaped to hide in his solar.

  He nodded as curtly as possible—which wasn’t much—toward the hall. “Come with me.”

  She didn’t move. “And if I say you nay and rely on the merits of your chivalry?”

  “And what makes you believe I have a smidgen of chivalry?”

  “I have a nose for that sort of thing.”

  He almost smiled. It took him a moment or two to recapture his frown. He didn’t want to like her. He nodded to himself over that, congratulating himself on a thought that surely made more sense than any other he’d ever entertained. She wasn’t a boy, which should have given him pause. He had the feeling she wasn’t a scullery maid, either, which did give him pause. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d met a serving wench who could speak Latin and do sums, which led him to believe that she couldn’t possibly be a servant.

  Who the hell was she?

  “I’m taking you to my solar,” he said, grasping for the first thing that made sense to him, “where I will lock you in to help you learn to suppress your less sensible impulses. I will then accompany Cook as she brings you endless baskets of mending and sewing. You will remain in my solar until I give you permission to leave it.”

  “Does it have a window?”

  He shot her a dark look and had a faint smile in return. “None that you’ll be using,” he muttered.

  “And my guardsmen?”

  “They will be cleaning the cesspit for the foreseeable future, assuming there is something left of them after Sir Aubert finishes with his labors. They can thank you for that. Do you care to cause anyone else any grief?”

  She lifted her eyebrows briefly but said nothing.

  “Then let’s go.”

  He wanted to stride angrily, but all he could manage was an anemic amble. If the demoiselle of a place she couldn’t remember noticed, she said nothing. She simply walked next to him, silent and grave.

  It took him longer to reach his solar than he would have liked, but once there, he pointed to a chair near the fire.

  “Sit.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll build up the fire, my lord. You sit.”

  “I do not need to be codd
led,” he said before he thought better of it.

  She turned and put her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t coddling you, Your Grace, I was trying to be of some use.”

  He merely pointed at a chair and waited until she’d sighed, then walked over to cast herself down into it. She looked at him, clear-eyed and unrepentant. He had the feeling she was only barely keeping herself from sending a crisp satisfied? his way.

  He ignored her, then went to fetch wood. He carried an armful over to the fire, dropped a piece, then leaned over to pick it up from where it had almost landed on her toes. He would have thought that living with his broken body for so long would have taught him something, but obviously he had learned nothing so far. He overbalanced, his right leg gave way, and he landed hard upon his knees. The wood spilled out of his arms and half into the fire, sending sparks shooting out from the hearth onto them both.

  His companion said nothing. She merely stomped out what was live, then quickly piled the wood onto the fire as if she’d done it countless times before. All that was left for him to do was put out a single smoldering spot on his hose, then attempt to salvage his pride. He trotted out a selection of curses for inspection, gave vent to a handful of them, then wondered why it was they didn’t soothe him as they should have.

  She moved a heavy chair where he could reach it. He used it to get to his feet, then collapsed into it with a groan. She sat down in the chair facing him, then looked at him with a polite smile, as if she hadn’t just witnessed him making a fool of himself.

  “Shall I read to you?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “What?”

  She started to speak, but a knock interrupted her. She looked at him.

  “May I?”

  “Best take my sword.”

  She smiled. He realized then that he was in a fair bit of peril where she was concerned, which had to have been the most ridiculous thing he had ever thought over a lifetime of ridiculous thoughts. She was a simple wench, he was lord of a vast estate—

  She pulled the dagger from his boot without comment. Poor fool that he was, he simply had no energy to protest. He listened to her open the door and greet his second-eldest half brother.