by Lynn Kurland
Gervase started to congratulate his second-youngest sibling for his good sense when the import of Yves’s words seeped into what was left of his feeble brain. He looked at his brother. “How long ago?”
Yves shrugged, then looked at Fabien. “A little bit ago, yes?”
“An hour,” Fabien said.
“Don’t be daft,” Pierre said. “’Twas at least a pair of hours. You’ve been dawdling ever since and Isabelle told you to have your sums done when she returned.”
Gervase frowned thoughtfully and left his brothers to their undone work. He walked bodily into Joscelin before he realized his brother was in his way.
“Move,” he said shortly.
Joscelin stepped aside, but unfortunately he wasn’t the only impediment. Gervase didn’t bother with Miles, he simply pushed him out of the way and strode out of his hall.
It took him a very brief time indeed to reach his bedchamber. He found Isabelle’s two new guardsmen—the steely-eyed warriors he’d chosen that morning to guard her at all costs—standing there looking fierce. He nodded to them, then turned and rapped briskly on the door.
There was a muffled noise from inside that alarmed him so greatly, he set aside any hesitation he might have felt at entering a woman’s bedchamber uninvited and simply flung the door open.
A lad sat in front of the fire, tied to a chair.
Gervase whirled on Isabelle’s guardsmen. “Who left this chamber?”
The lad on the right made him a sharp bow. “No one, Your Grace. A serving lad emerged a pair of hours ago, to be sure, but—”
Gervase swore viciously and strode inside the chamber. He pulled the gag out of the lad’s mouth and bent over to glare at him.
“Bested by a girl?” he said shortly.
“She’s vicious!” the lad wailed.
Gervase threw up his hands in despair. Truly there were times he feared for the continuation of the species. “What did she say?”
“Nothing, Your Grace,” the boy said, looking thoroughly unsettled. “She simply clouted me over the head—with a very large rock, I’m sure—while I was adding wood to the fire. The next thing I knew, I was sitting here and she was smudging soot on her cheeks.”
“Did you encourage her to stop?”
“My mouth was full of cloth, Your Grace. I shook my head quite vigorously, but she ignored me.”
Gervase was unsurprised by that. He was surprised, however, by one thing and that was why the hell she had run. Was she suffering from a guilty conscience and had decided that fleeing was her only alternative? If that were the case, then why would she have come back to Monsaert to start with? Much easier to simply hire someone to slip inside his gates and slay him while he was napping.
He folded his arms over his chest and looked into his fire. It took a moment or two, but reason returned. It couldn’t have been Isabelle to pen that missive simply because it made no sense. She hadn’t been there for the first attack on his person, why would she be interested in a second? More to the point, why would she have spent all that time gathering herbs and enduring his snarls and disdain if she’d had any other end in mind but helping him heal?
He leaned over and looked at his serving lad with the most harmless expression he could muster. “Did she say anything,” he began slowly, “anything that would indicate where she intended to go?”
“The stables, Your Grace,” the boy said faintly.
Gervase straightened and cursed as he turned and left his bedchamber. He didn’t bother to chastize the guardsmen standing there. He was stopped at one point in the passageway by Miles and Joscelin—to see them combining forces was truly appalling—but he parted them efficiently and continued on his way.
It occurred to him as he strode toward the stables that he was striding not limping, which he supposed was an almost miraculous improvement. It was a miracle he had Isabelle de Piaget to thank for.
Then why had she run?
“Ger, wait!”
He ignored his brother, collected his captain and another pair of lads on his way, and procured his fastest horse from Master Simon, who only nodded approvingly at the choice. Aubert lifted an eyebrow as they mounted in front of the stables.
“Caours Abbey,” Gervase said.
“She took Philip, you know.” Aubert looked at him knowingly. “The horse, not the young monarch.”
His second-fastest horse. He supposed in that he could credit her with a bit of sense. She had bought herself at least a handful of minutes where he might not have suspected what she was about. That Simon had let her take anything at all was a mystery, but one he had no time to solve at present. Perhaps she had dazzled the man with her smile. The saints only knew he could understand that.
A quarter hour later, he was thundering away from his front gates, grateful that he was able to do it in some manner besides clinging to the saddle and hoping he didn’t fall off.
Two hours, damn it to Hell.
Anything could have happened to her in two hours.
Chapter 19
Isabelle found herself exceptionally grateful for the quality of the steeds in her father’s stables and the amount of time her sire had taken to teach her to ride. That had allowed her the freedom to take choice of the offerings in Monsaert’s stables, though she had settled for a lesser animal than the one she’d brought from Nicholas’s stables. The stable lad she’d flipped three coins to and pressed into secrecy had only sighed when she’d promised him that her brother was waiting for her in the village, so she would certainly be safe on her own. The stablemaster had glanced at her, then made a serious study of the hayloft as she had snuck out right in front of him.
She could only hope that would be enough to keep the both of them from joining Coucy’s man who still lingered in the dungeon.
She supposed she was fortunate to have escaped Monsaert at all without a score of men trailing after her. The truth was, she hadn’t known what else to do. She had a knife and a very fast horse which meant she would at least gain the abbey in safety. What happened there was something she couldn’t control. For all she knew, if she didn’t arrive when summoned, something terrible would happen to her grandmother.
And her grandfather, whoever he might have been.
Whatever other failings her mount might have had, endurance was not one. He was willing to stay at a canter for long stretches and his trot was exceptionally enthusiastic. She had been forced to pause a time or two to catch her own breath—and that was something she would have to address at a future time—but supposed that merely a trio of hours had passed before she saw her grandmother’s abbey rising up before her in the distance. She looked around her to make certain there was no one lurking about with evil intent, but there seemed to be no ruffians in the area.
There was, however, a man riding her way in a tearing hurry.
Gervase de Seger, as it happened.
She would have kicked her mount into a gallop, but the truth was she had ridden him too far already that day and couldn’t bring herself to abuse him. Her only piece of good fortune was that the abbey was indeed close enough that she thought she might manage to at least gain the grounds before she was caught.
Gervase, on his own. That did not bode well for her.
She rode her horse for a bit longer, then she jumped down and ran.
“Isabelle, stop!” Gervase shouted.
She didn’t take the time to snort, but she supposed that would have been the only useful reaction. As if she would simply give up and give in! She looked over her shoulder to find that he had almost reached her. He reined his horse in, then jumped down from the saddle himself. She winced at his curse, then turned and fled. She couldn’t help his pain any more than she had already.
Either he had recovered almost instantly or he was impervious to nagging twinges in his form because she soon realized he was directly behind her.
“Isabelle,” he gasped, “stop.”
She whirled around, pulling his knife from her boot as sh
e did so. She pointed the blade at him. “Don’t come any closer to me.”
He pulled up short and looked at her in such astonishment, she blinked. It crossed her mind that perhaps she had misjudged him, but nay, that wasn’t possible. He was following her, so what else was she to think?
“Do you think I would harm you?” he asked, sounding stunned.
She took a firmer grip on her blade. Well, his blade, but perhaps he wouldn’t notice. “You were following me.”
“Aye, to protect you!”
She lifted her chin. “Or to do me in.”
“Well,” he said, looking as if the admission pained him, “I did consider that, but not perhaps for the reasons you might think.”
“You will not find me an easy victim.”
He said no more, but simply leaned over with his hands on his thighs and drew in a dozen very ragged breaths. She was tempted to clunk him over the head as he was otherwise occupied, but the truth was, whilst his knife might have been beautifully crafted, it wasn’t enough to render him senseless. The best she could do was hold her ground.
He finally heaved himself upright, then put his hands on his hips. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?” she demanded. She looked at him standing there and felt her certainty fade a bit. He didn’t look like a man who wished her ill; he looked like a man who had ridden a fair distance in great haste to execute a rescue. She frowned. “Actually, I don’t know what to think.”
He slowly held up his hands. “I have no weapon, lady, as you can see.”
“You have a sword.”
He stared at her for a moment or two without moving, then slowly unbuckled his sword belt and tossed his blade at her. She caught it thanks to long years of doing just that, then set it on the ground behind her, never taking her gaze off him.
“You’re still very dangerous,” she pointed out.
He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “Isabelle, I was riding after you to keep you from doing something stupid and thereafter finding yourself dead in a ditch.”
She ignored the pleasure of hearing her name from a man she wasn’t related to. A handsome man, a very dangerous man, an extremely baffled man. She supposed that last bit gave her the upper hand, so there was no reason not to use that hand.
“Why does everyone think that when I’m riding off,” she said crisply, “that I’m doing something stupid?”
“Because you’re missing critical accoutrements necessary for the accomplishment of dastardly deeds.”
“And what would those be?”
He held up one finger. “Sword skill.”
She glared at him.
He held up two fingers. “Ruthless ability to kill when necessary.”
“Shut up.”
He laughed a little and reached out, presumably to pull her into his arms, then stopped. “Would you mind putting up your very fierce weapon there?”
She continued to point the blade at him. “How did you know where I’d gone?”
“I found that poor serving lad you tied up in your chamber,” he said, “which you should feel a great amount of guilt over. I don’t know that he’ll recover from the trauma. He had very few answers for me, but as I was looking at him trussed up like a fine goose, I remembered that you were terribly anxious to come visit your grandmother.”
She resheathed his knife down the side of her boot, then folded her arms over her chest and dredged up the sort of frown she thought might most closely resemble one of her father’s.
“Don’t think your charming smiles will win you my trust.”
He looked so genuinely surprised that she shifted.
“Well,” she said, “they won’t.”
“Isabelle,” he said in disbelief, “you can’t believe I would harm you.”
“You might not,” she said, then pointed behind him. “What of them? Are they yours?”
He looked over his shoulder and then turned. “Sword,” he barked.
She picked it up and put it into his hand, then watched him shake off the scabbard before he reached behind her with his left hand and pulled her up close behind him.
“Do not attempt anything heroic,” he said briskly over his shoulder.
“I have a knife—”
“Isabelle!”
“Well,” she muttered, “I do.”
He laughed, the lout. She would have poked him with his knife, but that seemed rather unsporting when he was putting himself between her and potential danger.
She put her hands on his back and waited to see if the tension would seep out of him or not. She attempted a quick peek around his shoulder and had a curse in return. She shook her head. He was so much like her father, which she supposed wasn’t a bad thing. Her father had a way of making the women in his care feel, well, cared for.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be useful. She lifted her foot up and pulled Gervase’s knife free with an unfortunately quite audible hiss.
He only sighed. “Incorrigible.”
“Just trying to be useful.”
“How can I argue with that?”
She realized abruptly that not only was he not arguing, he was not concerned. She felt the muscles in his back relax a bit more and realized that he was standing there, perfectly at ease.
“You’ve misled me,” she accused. “You weren’t worried.”
He turned around and smiled faintly. “Of course not. ’Tis simply my lads and your brother, Miles. Well, and Joscelin.” He shrugged. “It seemed a convenient way to distract you from stabbing me with my own blade.”
Isabelle scowled at him. “Rather unsporting of you, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure we should be discussing sporting. After all, I’m the one who’s been chasing you for most of the morning, fearing with every hoofbeat that I would catch you up and find you dead. I believe I haven’t begun to repay you for my feelings of terror.”
She looked up at him seriously. “Is that what you were thinking?”
“Yes, Isabelle, that was what I was thinking. Why would I think anything else?”
She took a deep breath, but could say nothing.
“Why did you not wait for an escort?”
She wasn’t sure what she dared tell him, or if she dared tell him anything.
“No particular reason.”
The look he gave her was so reminiscent of something her father might have favored her with, she almost smiled. She would have, if she hadn’t been so terrified. He stabbed his sword into the ground, then put his arms around her and drew her close.
“Oh, there’ll be none of that,” Miles called.
“Not now, Miles,” Gervase said, glancing over his shoulder. “Purchase me a few minutes of peace and quiet with your sister, why don’t you?”
Isabelle watched the company move off out of earshot, then considered her position. She stood in Gervase’s arms and felt for the first time in weeks almost safe. She considered many things, not the least of which was that for someone who might want to kill everyone she loved, he didn’t seem to be in a rush to see to it.
“Can I trust you, I wonder,” she murmured.
“I haven’t given you very many reasons, have I?” he asked with a sigh.
“You guarded my door.”
“I guarded you.”
“Aye, well, that’s true,” she agreed.
He continued to drag his fingers through what was left of her hair. “I believe we must have serious speech together, my lady, about several things that puzzle me.”
“Must we?” she asked, attempting to sound as if she might not have time for such a thing.
“Why did you leave England, Isabelle?”
“I wanted an adventure.”
He pulled back far enough to look at her. The skepticism on his face almost made her smile. “Try again.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to give him the real reason, not yet. She pulled away from him. “I can’t say,” she said hon
estly.
“Why not?”
“There is a price attached to that sort of honesty,” she said quietly. “Might we walk, instead?”
He frowned thoughtfully, then reached over and picked up his scabbard. He resheathed his sword, belted it around his hips, then took his knife out of her hands. He very carefully resheathed it down the side of her boot, then straightened and clicked to his horse who seemed to sigh with a bit of regret over tasty grasses left unsampled. He did, however, amble over obediently. Gervase offered her his elbow.
“Let’s go.”
She took his arm, then walked for a bit before she looked at him. “Have you ever stood in the shadows and simply watched?”
He looked very briefly as if she’d elbowed him in the gut. He blew out his breath, then laughed a little. “What a question.”
She only continued to watch him. “Well?”
He glanced at her, then sighed. “I suppose I felt, on the occasional evening while my stepmother held court, that I wasn’t exactly welcome to participate.”
She’d heard the tale from his cook, so that didn’t surprise her. “That must have been difficult.”
He shrugged. “Cook was almost a score at that point, working under her father’s flashing spoon, yet she didn’t seem to mind an extra lad hanging about the kitchen.”
Isabelle smiled. “She’s inordinately fond of you, you know.”
“Anyone supping at my table over the past several days might disbelieve that,” he said with a snort. He shot her a look. “She was seriously displeased with your absence. I believe I am back in her good graces for the moment, but she has a fickle heart.”
Isabelle doubted that quite seriously. She considered what he’d said and what she already knew and grieved for him. Her youth had been the stuff of legends in comparison.
“I’m sorry,” she said, finally. “That your childhood was difficult.”
He shrugged. “I put away childish traumas years ago. I regret that I have not aided my brothers as I could have, but that is a discussion for another time when you have perhaps plied me with strong drink for the whole of an evening. Let’s turn to something more comfortable for me, which is examining your childhood more closely. What is this business of the shadows that drives you to take such terrible risks?”