by Tamara Leigh
His pupils expanded, nostrils flared, and he curved a hand over hers gripping the tablecloth. “Again, you judge me wrong.”
Striving to ignore the warmth and weight of his hand that caused something to ripple up her arm, she choked, “You want Godsmere!”
“Who would not? But that does not mean one should pay an unconscionable price—were it even for sale. And that brings us to the king. Young though he is, Edward is shrewd, and more so his advisers. The award of a forfeited Godsmere to the De Arells or Verduns could so rouse resentment in the one denied that, regardless of marriage-made alliance, the feud would continue. Thus, methinks the barony would go to another of the king’s loyal subjects.”
It made painful sense. If her prayers for Bayard went unanswered, she and her mother would be without a home. In which case, would it be better if Quintin’s absence caused her mother to yield to that edge she teetered upon—to be unaware of losing what was nearly as beloved as her departed husband?
“Of course, ’tis possible the king will see you wed to whomever he awards Godsmere,” Griffin said.
She blinked him back to focus and was surprised she did not want to spit at him for sensing her twisting and turning. What she wanted was to be alone.
“I…” Movement on the other side of him drew her regard, and she met Lady Thomasin’s blue gaze before the young woman dropped it to her father’s hand on Quintin’s. A smile bowed her mouth.
Suppressing the impulse to yank free, Quintin said, “I would like to return to the tower.”
Griffin had followed her gaze to his daughter, but neither was he quick to break the contact between Quintin and him. Eyes returning to hers, he said, “As you wish,” and slid his hand off in what felt almost a caress.
Quintin rose.
He also stood and motioned one of his men forward.
It was only as Quintin crossed the inner bailey that she realized her escort was Sir Otto, and only because her gaze grazed his face as she glanced at the heavy clouds Griffin believed would soon turn the land white.
If prayers were answered and Bayard was this moment making his way to Castle Mathe, would he arrive ahead of the snow? Or would it thwart him—and cost him Godsmere?
CHAPTER EIGHT
A slide of the bolt. A rap of knuckles. A creak of the door.
“My lady—”
“Supper,” she said, keeping her back to Sir Otto where she stood at the window staring into the white-flecked night. “He insists I join him?”
“Nay, my lady. ’Tis but an invitation.”
That she did not expect, and it took her a moment to respond. “Then I decline, but thank him for me.”
“’Tis chill in here, my lady. You ought to close the shutters.”
Ought to. But she was listening, easier done before the open window.
Lowering her chin into the mantle shrugged up to her ears, she said, “I appreciate your concern, but the brazier serves me well.” Not true with so much frozen air entering, but there was something strangely comforting about the discomfort of chilled limbs.
Hearing advancing footsteps, she looked over her shoulder.
“Forgive me if I overstep, my lady.” Sir Otto pulled the fur coverlet from the bed, strode to her, and raised his eyebrows.
At her nod, he draped it over her shoulders. Then he crossed to the chair and moved it between her and the brazier.
“I thank you,” she whispered.
He inclined his head. “Good eve, my lady.”
As the bolt scraped into place, she stepped nearer the window to resume her vigil of listening for the thunder of hooves that would announce her brother’s arrival.
It was dark, but not so dark he could not see the figure huddled in the chair angled between the weakly glowing brazier and the open window.
Fear lanced his breast. “Quintin?”
“Has my brother come?”
Silently thanking the Lord his fear was unfounded, he moved past her to the window. As he reached to secure the shutters against snow that had coated the ground outside to mark his passage from the keep, he looked out across the walls to the night-shrouded wood whose pine, oak, hazel, and birch trees ever sought to encroach on the castle—the blessing being they supplied abundant firewood to cast out winter’s chill, the curse they provided too much cover for any who wished to steal upon Mathe. Due to that vulnerability, no town had been allowed to grow up outside the castle walls.
Griffin closed the shutters and turned.
The lady’s legs were drawn up, knees clasped to her chest, and she’d had enough sense to wrap herself in the fur. The bit of light revealing she stared at the floor, she said again, “Has my brother come?”
In spite of the ill between their families and his opposition to his daughter wedding Boursier, Griffin almost wished the man had appeared. “He has not.”
She nodded amid the fur framing her face and in a fainter voice said, “Is it past the middling of night?”
“It is.”
Slowly, she raised her gaze to his. “You are here to taunt me.”
Lord, he silently entreated, not only the sins of the father and the brother, but my own.
“I am not.” Though Sir Otto had revealed he had found her before the open window, Griffin had not expected she would be there still, but as he had worked through correspondence in his solar, it had worried at him. And more so as night deepened.
“Then for what have you come?” she asked.
“With the weather turning more foul, I wished to ensure your comfort.”
“Comfort…” She shuddered.
He took the short stride to the brazier and over his shoulder said, “Get yourself abed.” He stirred the coals, added kindling, and as the slumbering flames awakened, placed more coal atop them.
When he turned back, she had not moved, and the brazier now lit the room well enough to reveal her starkly pale face. “You must rest, Lady Quintin.”
Once again, her gaze climbed the length of him, and when her eyes met his, he saw the strain there. Had she not been crying, it was because she refused to allow the tears inside to squeeze out.
“Aye,” she said and dropped her feet to the floor, leaned forward, and shuddered violently. “I cannot.”
Griffin scooped her into his arms. Though he expected her to protest, she sank against his chest and slid a hand from beneath the fur and up around his neck.
It should not feel right, he told himself. I should not concern myself with her. And yet he longed to lower to the chair and hold her—to give his warmth to her until she was once more the fiery Quintin Boursier who would not allow him so near.
He carried her to the bed, but when he laid her on the mattress, she tightened her hold on him.
“You can loose me, my lady.”
“Stay.”
Was she delirious? “You would have me lie with you?” he said, certain that if he gave words to what she asked of him, she would come to her senses—and quite possibly strike him.
“I am so cold, Griffin.”
Certes, she knew to whom she made the request. “’Twould be unseemly, my lady.”
“Unseemly.” She gave a bitter laugh. “What does it matter now?”
Now that only something approaching a miracle would prevent Godsmere from being lost to her family. “’Twill matter come the dawn.”
Shuddering again, she said between her teeth, “Then I shall hate you come the dawn. Not now.”
Leave, the rational Griffin warned.
Stay, urged the other who longed to hold her.
Silently vowing he would remain only until she was sufficiently recovered, he lowered onto his side facing her and drew the fur over himself as well to more easily pass his body heat to her.
“Nay, I will not hate you now,” she murmured and scooted closer. “Mayhap not even come the morrow.” She pressed her face to his chest and her lower legs to the tops of his thighs.
Unseemly, his rational side protested. Improper. Foolis
h. Tempting.
Still, he held her and focused on his breath to control the beat of his heart. Blessedly, it was not long before her own breathing told she slept. But her body was slow to warm—shivering one moment, easing the next—and so he curved an arm around her back and slid a hand beneath her waist.
As her quaking waned, he tried to turn aside thoughts that he would never again hold her thus, that it would be another who wrapped his body around hers and knew her more intimately.
Tried, but over the hours before the combined efforts of his body and the brazier warmed her, he thought them often enough that there was no danger of her awakening to find him asleep beside her.
Before dawn, he lifted his arm from around her and considered her shadowed face, from the fall of her lashes atop her cheeks to softly parted lips. Then he touched his mouth to her brow.
“Do not hate me, Quintin,” he said low. And left her.
CHAPTER NINE
“You are a Boursier. Be worthy.” Over and over she repeated it where she sat in the center of the bed, the fur down around her hips, her head in her hands as she tried to keep the night past from drawing near. But each time she began to relax into her victory over memories on the far side of a doorway she did not want to go through, they appeared on the threshold, threatening to come to her if she did not come to them.
And that was when she glimpsed Griffin lifting her from the chair, her hand sliding around his neck, his face above hers as she beseeched him to stay, him lowering to the bed beside her, her curling into him as if vows spoken amid a world turning white had made them one.
She shook her head so hard it ached, but the discomfort was worth the relief of scattered memories. However, as they distanced themselves, she heard herself whisper, Nay, I will not hate you now. Mayhap not even come the morrow.
With a muffled cry, she pushed away the fur, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stumbled upright.
“You are a Boursier,” she said as she crossed to the window. “A Boursier!” She threw back the shutters and gasped as the frigid air Griffin had banished flung itself in her face.
Hugging her arms about her, she peered through the swirling snow at the stretch of inner wall adorned by men trudging the walks and moved her gaze to the wood beyond.
As expected, it was as white as the rest of her world. And it would be whiter ere the snow ceased its attempt to cleanse this corner of England—a futile purification greatly suffered by the men outside the walls. Men who, along with the barony of Godsmere, might no longer belong to her brother, regardless of whether or not he lived.
“Live, Bayard,” she whispered and wished she had heeded Sir Victor and her mother and not left Castle Adderstone. The Godsmere knights and men-at-arms would be safe and warm within its walls and she would be there to comfort her mother.
She bowed her head as she had done on the night past when she had pleaded with the Lord to deliver her brother to Castle Mathe. “Let Bayard be healthy and whole,” she tried again. “Let there be the peace of your presence upon my mother. Let there be safety and warmth and game aplenty to sustain my escort. And let there be a way for me to make right all I have made wrong. Amen.”
She closed the shutters, crossed to the brazier, and opened her hands above coals that should not be so bright and warm. At this hour of the morn, they should be nearly exhausted.
“Oh,” she breathed and dropped her hands to her sides. Griffin was not long gone. She had spent nearly all night in his arms, and after he had risen, he had fed the brazier to ensure the warmth he had given her was not lost.
Tears stung her eyes, and she did not understand the cause, for the only sense of them did not make sense. This day was but her fourth at Castle Mathe, far too little time to engage one’s heart, especially a heart that knew not how to be engaged. And certainly not to the Baron of Blackwood who was too…
“Hated,” she said, but it was a lie. She had not hated him last eve. And now it was the morrow, still she did not hate him. Because of his unexpected kindness? It must be. Too, the increasing likelihood Bayard was dead made her vulnerable—a sorry state for a Boursier. And she surely looked a sorry state, her gown more heavily rumpled than on the day past. Though she tried to push back imaginings of her skirts bunched between Griffin and her, they drew near the threshold alongside the memories.
“Enough!” Determined to make a straight line between her thoughts and actions, she once more reminded herself of who she was.
Regardless of the failure of the Boursiers to fulfill the king’s decree, she would honor her father and brother’s name. Never again would any man see her weak and needy as she had allowed Griffin to see her—Griffin whom, it was increasingly likely, she had wronged.
“Pride be trampled!” she rasped. A Boursier would apologize. Even had she not good cause beyond her own—the well-being of her brother’s men—forgiveness must be sought.
She crossed to the saddlebag, shook out its contents, and began making herself presentable while she awaited the arrival of the one who each morning delivered a basin of fresh water and hand towels with her morning pottage. A meal whose every spoonful she would choke down, since it would be hours before Griffin once more invited her to his table.
If he invited her again.
This he had not anticipated, not after how he had found her on the night past and how he had left her ere dawn. Out of courtesy, he had once more invited her to join him for the midday meal, but the aged knight he had sent had not returned alone with palms raised apologetically.
Lady Quintin paused inside the doors to remove her snow-flecked mantle. Then, laced into the gold-trimmed dark orange gown Sir Victor had sent the second day of her stay, shoulder-length hair full and gleaming from a recent washing, she walked forward with chin high.
Were he a stranger here, he would think her the Lady of Blackwood—a lady the barony had not had since his wife’s passing. Of course, even before Johanna was lost to him a year following Rhys’s birth, such a lady Blackwood had not had.
Johanna had been too uncertain of her role, too eager to please those who ought to have sought to please her, too gentle a soul to have been wed to Griffin de Arell. Though they had been fond of each other, neither had loved. They had done their duty.
Only the woman who had borne Thomasin had Griffin loved, and then he had been a squire of ten and six and she a chambermaid. Impossible—and foolish, he had silently concurred with his sire when he learned Alice had deserted their daughter. Just as anything beyond what had happened between Quintin and him on the night past was impossible and foolish.
He stood. “Once more you grace us with your presence, my lady.”
“I am pleased to have been given a choice.” It was the same she had said on the day past, but this time lacking derision.
She crossed the back of the dais, draped her mantle over the chair beside his, and settled herself.
As he returned to his chair, the servants who had paused upon her entrance began placing bowls of steaming stew before those gathered. And the wine poured into goblets wafted as much heat, perfuming the air with the scents of cinnamon and cloves.
The lady raised her goblet and sipped. “A good drink for so cruel a day.”
Doubtless, she spoke not only of the snow, but what appeared to be the loss of her brother and home.
“It warms the blood.” Though not, he thought, as she had warmed his last eve.
When the lady’s gaze remained unwavering, he wondered if she did not remember what had passed between them. Certes, she had been distraught, so much she had not seemed the one who had put a dagger to him, the same who, it appeared, sat beside him now—the confident, resolute Quintin Boursier he had wished back.
He took a long draw from his goblet, then settled it between his hands. “How were your dreams, my lady?”
A slight flicker in her gold-ringed brown eyes and a faint blush across her cheeks told she remembered. And now she would feign ignorance.
Bu
t a soft laugh parted her lips, and she blinked as if as surprised by it as he, then she further surprised by leaning near. “Unseemly they were, especially for a lady. And your dreams, my lord?”
Another game, but one he liked—at least at this place on the board. Wondering if meat had been served this day, rather than stew, she would have eaten from his knife, he said, “I dared not sleep lest I mistook reality for a dream and sinned in the belief I would be absolved upon awakening.”
Her lips tilted further, and glimpsing white teeth, he realized that any bowing of the mouth she had heretofore bestowed had been but a semblance of a smile. “Then one should only sin inside a dream, Baron?”
“Whenever possible, my lady.”
She straightened in her chair and took up her spoon.
Griffin did the same, and as he watched her display an appetite he had not believed her capable of, he pondered what had returned the backbone that had gone out of her last eve. But then Sir Mathieu returned him to the conversation her arrival had interrupted, and over the next hour he rarely looked her way, especially with Thomasin and Rhys so interested in what went between their father and his unwilling guest.
Feeling the languor about the hall, his retainers having settled into the warmth denied them outside, Griffin was reluctant to send them back out. But with ever more snow to be cleared to keep the baileys and walls passable, it was time.
He stood. “Return to your duties,” he called and did not begrudge the men their mutterings as they pushed up off tables and scraped back benches.
A hand touched his arm, and he stiffened in remembrance of it sliding around his neck. Looking to Quintin where she had risen alongside him, he said, “My lady?”
She peered at him from beneath lashes that were thicker than they were long, making her eyes seem lined in black. “I have a boon to ask of you.”
“For that you accepted my invitation?”
She inclined her head, and he was both disappointed and pleased she did not deny it. “For that and…” She swallowed. “If I have wronged you as I fear I have, I apologize.”