by Tamara Leigh
Quintin Foucault Boursier, he silently added the surname that better defined her. Though she was lovely to gaze upon, it was Foucault blood, tainted though it was by Boursier blood, that gave her the greatest appeal. Or so he was made to believe.
He shifted his attention to Thomasin, where she applied a blade to a skein of ivy her brother tugged at. Her blood was tainted by a commoner’s. More of a crime, he was also made to believe, and yet…
Feeling that which coursed his own veins, catching its thrum between his ears, he reminded himself that not only was Thomasin de Arell plain of face, but she was irksome. Lady Quintin was not. More, she was the prize. The only prize.
“Quintin Foucault,” he tested the name on his lips.
As if she heard, though it was impossible at this distance, she turned where she stood alongside Baron de Arell, who had unloaded an armful of pine boughs into the wagon. Shading her eyes against sunlight that poked a hole in the gathering clouds and, somehow, found her amongst the dense trees, she smiled at Otto and turned back to the baron.
It bothered that he warranted little more than a glance and an obligatory smile, but it was hard to fault her. She could not know he would make a worthier husband than one whose father had greedily snatched away another man’s property. But ere much longer, the truth would be revealed. God willing.
Or not, spoke the voice he was to pay no heed, the one that sought to unman him by provoking him to flee what had once been the barony of Kilbourne, the voice that made him fear for his soul.
Feeling the long years that had delivered him to this day, he dragged a hand down his face, slid it up the sleeve of the opposite hand, and fingered the scars climbing his arm. He remembered the getting of every one, as well as every promise he had made himself it would be the last. Was there any greater sin committed against one’s self than that of lying?
Something smacked his shoulder, and he reached for his hilt a moment ahead of the realization it was a snowball.
Rhys stepped out from behind a tree. Mouth a great swag upon a face whose round, boyish curve was becoming lean, he proclaimed, “I stole upon you, Sir Otto!”
Lest it be known he had fallen prey to a child’s stealth, Otto flicked snow from his mantle, laughed loud, and with great exaggeration called, “Why, I neither saw nor heard you draw near, young Rhys.” He looked at Thomasin where she stood far to the right of her brother and winked.
Rhys’s grin fell. “I did steal upon you!”
A year past, the boy would have accepted the condescension as truth and pridefully strutted away. A pity he now saw it for what it was, but for Otto’s sake, he would have to suffer it to its end.
Finding Griffin de Arell’s gaze on him where the baron and Lady Quintin stood beyond Thomasin, Otto made a show of suppressing a smile, gave a slight shrug, and returned his attention to Rhys. “Of course you did. You do your father proud.”
Though the boy had only ever esteemed Otto, something different shone from his eyes, not unlike what often appeared when Rhys looked upon Lady Quintin. And Otto regretted it. But it would pass, he assured himself, and was relieved when the boy crossed to his sister.
Before they reached their father, Thomasin pried her brother out of his mood, as evidenced by his excited chatter. Then, blessedly, Griffin de Arell announced it was time to return to the castle.
But the blessing threatened to be short-lived. As they rode from the wood to the left of more villagers who braved the winter weather to conduct business at the castle, Otto picked out a hooded figure too familiar for his liking. Hoping he was wrong, that it was not that one, he steeled himself lest he was right.
There was something breath-stealing about going into the arms of a man whose touch she liked. Often she was assisted in dismounting, and there were times the one who lifted her down drew so near there was contact between their bodies as she slid to her feet, but never had she felt what she did with this man who kept space between them.
Too much space, Quintin silently lamented as Griffin released her.
“Once I have settled my horse, I will join you in hanging the greenery,” he said.
Would he? On occasion, Bayard lent a hand, but it was mostly token since he preferred to spend his time practicing at arms or conducting demesne business. Of course, unlike Mathe, Adderstone was not without a lady to oversee such frivolity. Indeed, it had two—Quintin and her mother. Not that Lady Maeve was the force she had once been…
Once more pressed by worry, Quintin told herself, Now she knows I am well, she is well. No matter how much she dislikes Lady Elianor, she has Bayard and Hulda. She is not alone.
“You are bothered,” Griffin said.
Embarrassed at staring at him as if he were empty space, she shook her head. “I am well.”
His eyes told he did not believe her, but he said, “The servants have been informed they are to take direction from you.”
As if I am their lady already, she thought and glanced at Thomasin, who reached to Sir Otto to lift her out of the saddle. “What of your daughter?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“As I am sure you have witnessed, she is not comfortable ordering servants.”
Too true. The young woman was quick to do for herself and others those things with which servants—especially her maid—were more often tasked. And this morn, a hushed argument between father and daughter had ensued when Griffin pulled Thomasin away from the ledgers to assist the cook in planning the Christmas Day menu. Quintin guessed her reluctance had much to do with the common life she had first led.
“Certes, she will thank you for it,” he said. “Too, it will benefit her to see how the lady of a castle handles her responsibilities to her lord and people.”
Quintin was tempted to point out she was not Lady of Castle Mathe, Griffin was not her lord, and his people were not hers, but it seemed petty. Too, he watched her so closely, it struck her this might be his way of revealing he would soon wed her.
Before she could ask again, he said, “I am near to deciding.”
At least he moved in the right direction. “Then I am near to accepting.”
He smiled, and when a shivering, snow-dampened Arturo appeared beside her, he reached to the wolfhound.
Alarmed to discover the dog had waited all this time for her return, Quintin watched as he swiped his tongue over Griffin’s hand. Though she did not like the beast, she was touched by his steadfastness. It also helped that he no longer growled at her but suffered in silence.
“I will see you in the hall,” she said to Griffin and, joined by his daughter, departed the stables with Sir Victor following. But hardly had they reached the inner bailey than Thomasin halted, pushed back her mantle, and searched a hand across her waist.
“What is it?”
“I tucked a sprig of mistletoe ’neath my belt.” She peered over her shoulder. “Hopefully, ’twas lost in the outer bailey.”
“There is plenty more.” Quintin nodded at the wagon being unloaded at the keep.
“Ah, but this was a particularly pretty sprig. I will be but a moment.” She hastened back beneath the inner portcullis.
Accompanied by Arturo—and more discreetly, Sir Victor—Quintin stepped nearer the gatehouse door that accessed the tower room she did not miss. As she watched Thomasin, a villager entering the door in the outer portcullis caught her eye. He was hooded, but something about the height, breadth, and slight hunch—even the stride—called to mind one who made her fist seek her abdomen.
But it could not be the woman who had aided Constance in drugging and cuckolding Bayard. As her brother had told, Agatha of Mawbry was imprisoned beneath Castle Adderstone. Surely she was still there.
“Aude!” Thomasin lifted her skirts and ran forward, then halted and slowly turned where she stood as if seeking the one she had called to. Shoulders dropping as if with a sigh, she began to search the ground for her mistletoe.
When she returned, it was with a muddied and crushed sprig between thumb and f
orefinger. “I ought to have put it in my pouch,” she bemoaned.
“Aude?” Quintin asked as they continued to the keep.
“A friend. Though I have never known her to enter Mathe’s walls, I am fair certain I saw her, but she so suddenly disappeared—” She gasped. “Do not look, but my grandfather is at his window. He has opened his shutters, and I saw the curtains move.”
Was he watching now as Quintin was fairly certain he had watched that night his son had returned her to the tower room?
“He has asked after you,” Thomasin said as they ascended the steps, “though not in words.”
“What mean you?”
She laughed. “He is wily—knows well how to work a conversation around to where he wishes it.”
“What have you told him?”
“That though ’tis true you put a blade to his son’s throat, you would not have harmed him.”
“He cannot be pleased.”
She made a face. “He is vexed—indeed, nearly as much with my father.”
“Why your father?” Because of what the old baron had looked upon the night Griffin and she had paused in the bailey and his son had laid a hand to her face and she had readied herself for his kiss?
“He has not visited the apartment since the night you attempted to breach my grandfather’s sanctuary,” Lady Thomasin said as they entered the hall where servants had gathered to transform the great room into a celebration of their savior’s birth. “Thus, my grandfather feels more neglected than usual.”
“Why does your father stay away?”
A great sigh. “Relations between Ulric and him have oft been strained—even ere my coming, I am told.”
Given Ulric de Arell’s unscrupulous reputation, Quintin was further encouraged by the young woman’s account that there had long been discord between the two De Arells—more proof the man she had believed was as dishonorable as his sire was not.
Lady Thomasin leaned so near her shoulder bumped Quintin’s upper arm. “’Twas my grandfather who concealed my existence,” she said low. “Had my mother not done me one kindness ere she left me for her lover—providing me with my sire’s name should I ever be in dire need—my father would never have known he had a daughter.”
“Thus, he cannot forgive the old baron,” Quintin said and was surprised by a twinge of sympathy for Ulric de Arell. The man whose jealousy had long lit the feud between the three families was not deserving of sympathy, and she would not judge Griffin ill for holding himself apart from one who had denied him the daughter for whom he clearly felt affection.
Quintin frowned. Why did he, unlike many men who cast their misbegotten children to the wind, care for Thomasin? So much he had not only come to her aid but claimed her alongside his legitimate son? Because the young man he had been had loved her mother deeply? Or did he but take responsibility for his wrongs? Regardless, it further evidenced how mistaken she had been about him.
Lady Thomasin halted before a table below the dais upon which the greenery was being laid out. “I believe my father has mostly forgiven the old baron”—she snapped a piece of mistletoe from a large bunch—“but still my grandfather can be most unpleasant.”
“And you have forgiven him?”
She clicked her tongue. “I have, and I am fond of him—so much sometimes my heart hurts for how alone he is, that not even his beautiful cage gives him comfort of the sort he longs for.” She looked to Quintin. “I cannot stand to be long indoors. Imagine a man who has ridden the breadth and depth of England reduced to walls whose only blessing—and greatest curse—are windows that allow him to look out upon a tiny piece of all that is now ever denied him.”
Justice, perhaps? Quintin pondered. A righting of wrongs for all the misery visited on others? Not that she would suggest such to this one whom she wished in this moment were her sister-in-law, liking Thomasin as she doubted she would ever like Lady Elianor.
“Too morose!” The young woman waved the mistletoe. “I shall take this piece of the outdoors to my grandfather, allow him to satisfy his need to grumble at someone, and return to assist with the greenery.” She turned but came quickly back around. “Forget not that my father is to know nothing of my visits to the old baron.”
As she was not to know he was well aware of them. “I will say naught.”
Thomasin grinned and departed the hall, leaving Quintin amid servants who grudgingly looked to her for direction. And so she instructed them where to hang and spread and wrap the greenery, faltering only when Griffin appeared, but quickly resuming her lady’s duties beneath his gaze.
Hours later, finding herself alone with the Baron of Blackwood in an alcove whose opening they had draped with pine boughs, she stepped near to allow him to tuck a sprig of mistletoe in her hair. He tucked and stepped nearer yet.
And kissed her.
Oh, how he kissed her.
And how she wished he would decide soon.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Quietus.” On misted breath that dipped and arched, Ulric de Arell sent that word’s seven distinct sounds out of his body. And watched them dissolve across this day upon which others celebrated life.
Life, he bitterly mused. Quietus was the better of the two words. And how he esteemed it—that it was beautiful regardless if one shouted it loudly enough to bleed the ears or spoke it softly enough to soothe a wailing infant. More, he loved its meaning that was wondrously opposite that other word which promised much but disappointed more.
“Quietus,” he said again and felt the tightness in his chest loosen as the exquisite word for death assured him of a release from pain, anger, and heartache. Of course, none would believe him capable of that last—except, perhaps, his son’s great mistake.
Though he told himself he cared not whether his granddaughter came this day to tilt upon her stool and speak of what went in the castle, upon the barony, and in the world, he assured himself she would come.
On this Christmas Day, marked by sunshine that made a meal of the snow, she would slip abovestairs once she believed her absence would not be noted. And Ulric would suffer her impertinence and name her Sin and she would name him Fiend—which he rather liked, though he would not have her know it.
A boy’s laugh, one especially treasured for how rarely it reached his ears, moved him to the side of the window to ensure he was not seen.
Gripping the curtain with a painfully bunched hand, he waited for his grandson to come into view. And as always, he ached over watching from a distance as Rhys grew into a man. How he longed to be nearer the one born of the loins of his loins. But it could never be.
Just as Griffin would not risk the boy inside the apartment, neither would the leprous Ulric. Rhys was the only De Arell heir, and even if the Boursier woman bore Griffin a dozen children, her foul blood would render all unworthy. Thus, there would only ever be Rhys to speak the De Arell name into the centuries.
When the boy appeared in the bailey below, Ulric bent his mouth into as near a smile as he was capable of. A finer lad there had never been—not even Griffin, of whom Ulric was more proud than he would admit. Though not as proud of recent.
It was one thing to be forced to wed the Boursier woman, another that force was not needed. Desire only, Ulric hoped. The longing to bed a woman could be satisfied with many a comely wench, whereas infatuation thinking itself love—that great crippler of men—could make ruin of all things, as when Griffin had become besotted with that lowly chambermaid.
If not for Thomasin’s common mother, whom Ulric had refused to allow his son to wed, the divide between father and son would not have widened. If not for the revelation of Thomasin’s existence, the footbridge the years had built across that divide would have strengthened sufficiently to bear more weight. But Thomasin had made herself known to Griffin who, too often taking responsibility for others’ mistakes and misfortunes, had claimed that slip of a girl whom Ulric had once wished to see as diseased as he. Once…
Now Griffin came into view bel
ow—and the Boursier woman, who accepted the arm offered her by the one who would have fared better to remain her jailer.
Curse her! Ulric seethed. Then he cursed the body of Archard Boursier’s wife that had pushed that one out into the world, thereby furthering the line that would otherwise have ended once Lady Maeve died—or should end. There were times Ulric sensed another Foucault hand was responsible for much of the feuding between the families. Impossible, but felt.
The hem of his long tunic shifted, evidence of the little dog who liked to travel alongside its master’s feet. Then a wet nose bumped Ulric’s ankle—one of many distinctive warnings issued by Diot when someone ventured to the third floor.
This time it was his granddaughter, as confirmed by another wet bump. Had it been Griffin, Diot would growl low, indicative of the strain between father and son. Were it a stranger, as on the night Quintin Boursier had sought to reach the apartment, a savage bark would sound.
Ever grateful for the warning his sanctuary was about to be trespassed upon, giving him time to set aright things for which he might suffer further humiliation, Ulric fumbled for one of many walking sticks Thomasin had fashioned for him. He detested the branches pared of their small limbs, their bulbous tops smoothed to aid the palm in bearing the weight of the body leaning into them. Detested, yet clung to one or another when he had only Diot in his great alone. It would not do for Thomasin to know how much he depended on her gifts, since it would make her happier than she had a right to be.
As Ulric concealed the walking stick behind the chest to the left of the window, Diot bumped his ankle again.
“Aye, she comes,” he muttered and turned toward the door beyond one of several floor-to-ceiling hangings that shifted in the chill air wafting through the window.
There were her footsteps, the requisite rap, then silence as she counted to twenty to allow him to further prepare for her entrance.