“Really?” Valens said, and she realized she had spoken aloud, as she would have never dared with Eric, but her young husband grinned and moved a little faster, a little longer, stroking her inside and out.
And then it was nothing more of Eric but all Valens, sweeping her along with him, bearing them into rapture. A piercing, throbbing joy and a tumble to earth, where the grass and flowers cradled them and the birds sang them to sleep.
“Gorgeous,” Valens said a final time, spooning against her, his breath and lips tickling her ear as he softly snored. Katherine stared at their still-joined hands and allowed the rest of her sweetly aching body to sink down into a languorous slumber.
We are married, she told herself. It can only go well from here, surely? Yes, surely it will. He will tell me he loves me tomorrow, before our families and the priest. Yes he will, he will.
Still glowing, Katherine drifted into sleep.
Chapter 9
She was married. She and Valens had made their vows before a priest, before an ancient wooden door that Lord Sebastian and his men had brought with them and set up in the yard. Sebastian said it was a church door, taken from a church the Vikings had raided and left burned. Katherine could see the axe marks on the wood and decided he was telling the truth.
“Only my lord would have brought the church door to us, rather than the other way about,” Valens had remarked, his face bright with amusement, and Katherine shrugged. Amusing or not, it was done and they were married. She was still waiting for Valens to declare himself, but at least now she wore a new bright gold ring. And Lord Sebastian’s lady was saying something and she should pay attention. Katherine shook herself.
“Forgive me,” she began, stopping when a warm, callused hand clasped hers.
“A bride on her wedding day may forget everything but her husband,” said a low teasing voice. “I know I did.”
Lady Melissa, Lord Sebastian’s wife, was a surprise. True, she had a glowing, amber-and-roses beauty that harpers must praise for miles around. True, she was tiny and delicate, a jewel in a green and gold gown, moving around the tiny gathering of warriors and Valens’s fellow wood and metal workers with gracious ease. True, she had given Katherine a wonderful gift of a bolt of silk, the rare and costly cloth from the east. But she was still a surprise. That small, worn hand of hers with its close-bitten fingernails was a clue, and the way she spoke a further revelation.
“Is that not so, sir?” Melissa went on, looking up and across the flower-strewn yard at Lord Sebastian.
“As you claim, little Felix,” rumbled her husband, glancing over with a steel-tipped glare that should punch through wood.
“As you know, sir,” laughed Melissa, not at all worried by his glare. She left Katherine and glided across the yard to where Lord Sebastian swung Edie and Jack round and round, first one, then the other. “Since you stopped me falling flat on my face on our wedding day through staring at you.”
She loves him. I sense she has risked much for him. That was another surprise. Katherine thought lords and ladies joined only for power.
Lord Sebastian’s grim, craggy features softened, melted almost, Katherine thought, as he released Jack from a swing and caught Melissa into his arms.
“There is the man who can lead a charge and split his foes like fruit,” murmured Valens alongside her. “Besotted, he is.”
“You would be wise not to let him hear you,” answered Katherine, giving her new husband a warning pinch. It was no torment to look from the lord and lady sporting together to her own red and gold wonder. With his eye-catching hair and golden tunic, he was as gaudy as a cockerel—indeed, she had heard Lord Sebastian call him that, then grin. “I for one am glad they love each other.”
She waited, hoping that Valens would at last admit his love.
“I agree. It is marvelous to see.” Valens’s eyes were steady on her as he spoke and Katherine held her breath. In another moment he would surely speak his feelings and kiss her, their second public embrace as man and wife.
Smiling, his color high, he leaned in toward her.
“Daddy!” Jack charged across in his tottering-close-to-falling gallop. Edie was red-faced with the effort of overtaking him, and she was gaining.
“Son is right,” called Lord Sebastian as the two youngsters tumbled against Valens and resumed their clamor for attention. “And when we get Jack’s land back, you will have done well.”
“What?” Katherine felt drowned in a harsh jet of icy water. Gasping, she fixed on Valens. “You arranged this between you?” More secrets, after I believed there would be none. “For gain?” He never said he loved me, even when we joined. Called me “Little love,” but never said he loved me. Revulsion at the previously happy, untainted memory rose up her throat, bitter as a draught of rue and wormwood. “I thought you cared for me, not for the land or riches Jack and I would bring you!”
“It’s not the land and riches,” whispered Valens, but even now, even now, he would not say he loved her.
“You lied to me,” she declared, peeling his sticky fingers off her, away from her. “A lie by omission, but still a lie.”
Hard on the heels of that thought came another. Valens was a spy, living in a shifting world of dubious alliances and loyalties. He would always look for the best way to cover up his secrets, to tie others to him without committing himself. “And yesterday, in the meadow, that was about making sure, was it not?”
Valens went white.
“Making sure,” Katherine continued relentlessly as the sick conspiracy unfurled in her mind. “Have me so I am bound to you, make it impossible for our marriage to be annulled due to non-consummation. By joining with you, I will not be sure for at least a month if I am with your child or not, and in the meantime we are living together.”
Still Valens did not speak.
The coolness, the calculation, appalled her. “I thought we came together as man and wife, but really, by your actions, I am still your captive, your wet nurse—”
Edie sat down amidst the strewn flowers and began to wail.
“No, Kate,” Valens said quickly, smooth as a spy, but his eyelids fluttered even as he reached for her. “Please, listen to me.”
“Never again.” Katherine flung up her own hands and pushed, breaking free, catching up Jack as she ran for the yard gate.
She was not allowed to escape. Sebastian stood before the gate, arms folded, a puzzled glower on his face. “What goes on here, by Lucifer?”
“Wait, sir.” Melissa wrapped surprisingly strong arms about Katherine and Jack and whispered urgently against her wedding veil, “Easy, there. It is not so bad. Whatever you think.”
Katherine shook her head. “Never again,” she said, burying her face in her son’s messy curls so he would not see her tears. How can I ever trust him? “It is too late.”
She let the lady Melissa guide her away.
* * * *
Their wedding night was evil. His lord insisted they be put to bed together, though Valens had pleaded that he preferred to spend the night alone in the barn. He and Katherine—she was Katherine again, not Kate—lay side by side, rigid as posts, and neither slept nor spoke.
“Talk to her, runt!” Sebastian snarled at him as he and his men and his father and the children all gathered firewood next morning that was not needed. “My Melissa will do her best for you and try to build a bridge for you to take, but you must speak.”
Valens nodded and wondered what his lord’s wife was saying to his. When he had shuffled from the hut, he had seen their heads bent close together and Melissa whispering. In truth he had little hope. Katherine was muted, blunted, drifting without energy, like a ghost. He missed the spark of feeling in her eyes. I have done this to her. He wanted to flee into the forest and live as a wild man.
“It is too late,” he admitted softly. His head buzzed like a hive of furious bees, but he could not pluck a single strategy from his mind. “She thinks I bedded her early so our marriage could not
be annulled.”
“I heard something of your quarrel,” Sebastian remarked drily. “What of it?”
“I have lost her.”
“Rubbish.” Sebastian looked as if he wished to punch something.
Valens stepped away from his lord as Sebastian spat out more suggestions that he could not heed. He remembered Kate’s warm, firefly look from their joining together, the tender glee of their embraces, the trust. He had ripped that away.
“Have you told her you love her, you fool?” Sebastian’s voice broke through his pall of misery.
“I thought I did.” Still not understanding how it had gone so badly, so quickly, Valens shrugged. “Without words.” He had planned to confess within their marriage bed, prove to her that he was not like that first husband of hers. No, I am worse.
“Then you really are a fool,” Sebastian replied, his face as harsh as steel. “Talk to her,” he said again, his words somewhere between a suggestion and an order.
“Yes,” said Valens, though he knew it was no use.
* * * *
“When I was first brought before Sebastian I dreaded him,” Melissa admitted, changing Edie with a deftness Katherine had not expected from her. “He seemed harsh, unyielding.”
Katherine stroked Jack’s face as he fed. Usually his suckling made her feel oddly safe and content, but not today.
“I soon learned otherwise,” Melissa went on. “He did not hurt me. Though he was and is possessive. That once caused great trouble.” Perhaps it had, but the lady smiled at the remembrance. “We weathered it and learned to understand one another.”
Katherine swallowed the burning lump in her throat. “I do not dread Valens. I despise him.”
“Because you think he lied?” Melissa caught a squirming Edie before she rolled off the bed and gave the little girl her doll to play with.
Katherine felt herself staring. “What else would you call what he did?”
“A sin of omission, perhaps?” Melissa echoed one of Katherine’s earlier thoughts, but without the bitterness.
“Worthy of a spy,” Katherine commented dryly. Her chest hurt and she wondered why she troubled to argue when part of her wanted to keep listening to Melissa.
“Is that so terrible?” Melissa smiled as Edie put her thumb in her mouth and said “Why?” around her thumb. Some of her indulgence remained for Katherine when she turned again to look at her. “Everyone has secrets, even couples who love each other. I do not know all that Sebastian does, nor he me.” Her smile became wider, more generous. “Mystery is good, especially for an alchemist.”
“Valens is a fletcher,” Katherine countered.
“And a spy.”
“You make it sound like a craft he should take pride in.”
Katherine flinched as Melissa touched her shoulder. The woman was as small and moved as lightly as she did, although not as silently as Valens. Of course she does not. Valens is a spy.
“I know he will be good at it, or my lord would not have paid him,” Melissa replied, with a bluntness that made Katherine blink in surprise. “Yet he has also stripped away his disguise for you. Does that not show something of how he feels?”
Katherine swapped Jack onto her other nipple. “I am useful to him.”
“Is it not right that husband and wife are help-mates? But Katherine, Kate, as Valens calls you, do you not see that you are more than that here?” Melissa nodded about the cottage. “You are the heart of this house.”
Katherine yanked up her head to protest and encountered Melissa’s considering gaze and her raised hand.
“I know you want to argue. I would have wanted to protest myself, were I where you feel to be now. Will you return with me to the tower?”
“Why?” Katherine echoed Edie’s question.
“To show you the world Valens enters when he is not a fletcher. It may help you understand,” Melissa added gently. Her and forgive, was unspoken but equally felt, Katherine sensed.
“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes against Melissa’s look of pleasure. She would go, but only to avoid being alone with Valens, to put off more talk between them. Anything would be better than staying here. “Yes, I will go with you.”
But what will happen tonight?
Chapter 10
Valens stared at his wife, seated beside the Lady Melissa in the herb garden of the tower, and wished he could return them both to the meadow where they had made love.
“Go on.” Sebastian knuckled his shoulder. “Take her the tisane. ‘Tis my Melissa’s favorite and no doubt will become your Kate’s.”
I am not sure she is mine, Valens wanted to say, but he knew that would sound too defeated. He gripped the flagon and cups harder.
“By Lucifer, what is so difficult? I am not asking you to assay gold. She has just fed your brats and put them to bed in our chamber. My Henry is keeping an eye on them and your wife is outside with mine, enjoying this beautiful, warm evening. Both will be thirsty. Take Kate the drink and if she tries to leave, order her to stay.”
“As you do your wife?” Valens retorted, but his lord snorted, not even put out.
“That would be for you to discover, runt,” he replied.
Valens jabbed his elbow into Sebastian’s unyielding flank. “Stop goading me.”
Sebastian showed his teeth. “Merely checking you are alive.”
“My Lord!” A shout came from the shadow of the great stone tower and Valens turned to look.
A gangling squire, herald—whatever he was, and Valens did not greatly care at the moment—strode along the speedwell-studded grass pathways. Sebastian swung round, stepping so he was between the intruder and their womenfolk, and rapped out a “Yes?”
“A townsman has come, my lord, seeking redress.”
“You disturb my evening for that?” Sebastian folded his arms across his chest. “If he wants justice, let him go to the sheriff.”
“He claims one of your men cheated him, my lord.”
“Does he now?” said Sebastian, in a soft hiss that had the lady Melissa glancing up from the flower border. Valens hoped that his wife would show similar interest but her head remained bowed, the tansy and hyssop and marigolds never so interesting, it seemed.
“I will see this townsman.” Sebastian put out a hand and patted the air as if it was one of the hunting dogs, a gesture of gentleness, Valens realized, to reassure his lady.
Would I could do the same for mine.
The gangling youth gave a small bow. “I will bring him here, yes? His name is Basil. He is a coin-maker.”
Above the thudding of his heart, Valens heard Katherine gasp. She rose from the bench, her face very pale then very red and she twisted about—
—To look at him.
She knows I will help. She trusts me.
The knowledge pumped through him. Valens raised his arm to her, not daring to smile lest it appear a grimace, and said to his lord, “I will see him.”
“Where?” demanded Sebastian.
“In the training yard.”
“Excellent!” Sebastian rapped him on the arm and left to give the orders.
Moving as though through sand, Valens walked across to Katherine. Melissa had already withdrawn. Kate looked up at him, her face closed, though her eyes were bright.
“Your son-in-law?” he asked gently, his heart clenching when she nodded.
He wanted to kiss his wife and hold her, but all he could do was to make a promise. “I will keep you safe, you and Jack.”
She nodded, trembling slightly, like a flowering grass in a strong breeze. He clasped her cold fingers, feeling a little easier when she did not seek to withdraw. “I will win back your son’s land.”
“You would attempt this?” she whispered, leaning in to him. She does not even know what she is doing. “How?”
Now, finally, he could release some of the humming tension in his body. “I will challenge him, Kate. I will fight him.”
Sensing that more words would be too much, Va
lens turned her hand, dropped a kiss into her palm, and released her. Returning to the tower, he felt her eyes on his back the entire length of the herb garden.
Progress at last.
Chapter 11
Someone must have cast a curse on her to freeze her in place. That was the only reason Katherine could think of, the thing that had kept her silent and still as Valens walked away. Straight-backed, head raised, stiff, he walked like an active, thrusting young man, a craftsman sure of his place in the world. He had not moved so jerkily in the days before their quarrel. Before she could consider why, he vanished into the shadow of the tower.
She started, feeling as if she had been squashed between invisible giant hands, and then flung her languor off. This was the man who was willing to risk his life for her and her son, who had saved her from the spite of Big Aggie and the horrors of a winter without shelter. I have a home because of him. Jack has a future because of him. I have a father, Thorkill, and Edie, child of my heart and foster-daughter, because of him.
“Wait!” Slipping on the evening dew, she chased to catch him. There was a flash of his bright-maned father farther off in the garden, brilliant as the peacock feather he had once shown her. “Valens, hold on!”
She ran a second time, colliding with a wall.
“Oof!” Katherine panted and tried to climb the barrier. The dark wall shifted, Sebastian’s long arms winding round her body as he pinned her tight.
“Be still,” he said steadily, his breath hot against her skull. “He cannot hear you now.”
“But he will fight!” Dropped back onto her heels, Katherine tried to weave around the man, found her way blocked, and used desperate words instead. “Basil makes enemies for sport. He is deadly with knives.” And Valens is about to challenge him. “If Valens is hurt—”
“He strives for your son.” Sebastian stepped back, giving her a look as if she were a failed alchemical experiment. “For Jack’s land and rights.”
Valens the Fletcher and his Captive [Medieval Captives 2] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 7