The Velvet Promise

by Jude Deveraux

  “Yes,” Judith agreed. “I am aware of that. I am grateful though that you took me from that place. I almost prefer Alice’s company to sewing, but the two together are more than I can bear!” She sighed. “I suppose Gavin didn’t send for me.”

  “Why must he send for you? Don’t you think he will be pleased to see you?”

  Judith frowned.

  “You are a foolish woman,” Joan said, risking harsh words from her mistress. “The man wants you, yet you don’t see it.”

  Once outside in the bright sunlight, Judith forgot all thoughts of Alice. Gavin leaned over a large trough of water, bare from the waist up as he washed himself. Judith crept silently behind him then leaned over and gave him a nipping kiss on his neck. The next moment she found herself gasping for breath as Gavin swung round and knocked her into the trough. Both of them were very surprised.

  “Judith! Are you hurt?” Gavin asked as he put his hand out to her.

  She knocked it away, wiping water from her eyes, looking at her soaked and ruined gown, the crimson velvet plastered to her body. “I am not, you clumsy oaf. Do you think I’m your war-horse, that I may be treated as an animal? Or perhaps you think I’m your squire?” She put her hand to the side of the trough to lift herself, but her feet slipped and she went under again. She gasped as she looked up at Gavin. His arms were folded across his chest and he wore a broad smile.

  “You are laughing at me!” she hissed, enraged. “How dare—”

  He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her dripping body. “May I offer my apologies? I’m not exactly calm since Demari’s. I was too late in recognizing your kiss as a kiss. You shouldn’t sneak upon me, but give me some warning.”

  “You needn’t fear such happening again,” Judith said grimly.

  “Only you, my little wife, would be so saucy while being held over a body of water. I could drop you in again.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  He grinned then lowered her slowly until her toes came near the water again.

  “Gavin!” she cried, half-pleading.

  He drew her to him, then gasped as her cold body touched his skin.

  “You are well repaid,” she laughed. “I hope you freeze.”

  “Not with you near.” He swung her into his arms. “Let’s go to our room and remove these wet clothes.”

  “Gavin, you can’t think—”

  “Thinking, while you are in my arms, is a waste of time. If you don’t want to cause more attention drawn to yourself, be quiet and let me have my way.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  He rubbed his cheek against her wet one. “You will find those pretty cheeks will turn very red.”

  “Then I am a captive?”

  “Yes,” he answered firmly and carried her up the stairs.

  Queen Elizabeth walked beside her husband. They stopped when they saw Gavin knock Judith into the water. Elizabeth would have gone to help Judith, but Henry stopped her.

  “Look at their love play. It pleases me when I see a couple so in love. It isn’t often that a marriage of estates turns to happiness.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “I’m glad to see them each loving the other. I wasn’t sure there was love there. Lady Alice seems to think the Lady Judith isn’t a fit match for Lord Gavin.”

  “Lady Alice?” King Henry asked. “She is that blonde woman?”

  “Yes. Edmund Chatworth’s widow.”

  Henry nodded. “I would like to see her married soon. I have watched her. She plays with men, rather like a cat with a mouse. She seems to care for one, then the other. The men are in love with her beauty and will take much from her. I wouldn’t like to see them come to blows. But what has the woman to do with Lord Gavin and that lovely wife of his?”

  “I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said. “There is some gossip that Gavin was once in love with Lady Alice.”

  Henry nodded toward Gavin as he lifted his wife into his arms. “He is not so now, as everyone can see.”

  “Maybe not everyone. Lady Alice baits Lady Judith constantly.”

  “We must stop this,” Henry said.

  “No,” Elizabeth put a hand on her husband’s arm. “We can give no orders. I fear it will only make Alice more angry, and she is the kind of woman who would find a way to say what she wanted no matter what orders were given her. I think your idea of marriage to be the best. Can’t you find a husband for her?”

  Henry watched Gavin carrying his wife toward the manor house, teasing and tickling her, causing Judith’s laughter to ring through the yard. “Yes, I will find Lady Alice a husband, and quickly. I wouldn’t like to see anything come between those two.”

  “You are a good man,” Elizabeth said and smiled up at her tall husband.

  Henry chuckled. “Only to a few, my dear. You should ask the French who is a good king or not.”

  Elizabeth waved her hand. “You are too soft on them, too good to them.”

  He bent and kissed her forehead. “And if I were a French king, I’m sure you’d say the same of the English.”

  She smiled lovingly up at him and he laughed and squeezed her arm.

  There was someone else who took a special interest in the play of the Montgomeries. Alan Fairfax had started forward, his hands on his sword when he saw Gavin knock Judith into the trough. Then he looked about guiltily. A man could treat his wife in any manner he wished, and Alan had no right to interfere.

  As Alan watched, he saw Gavin’s concern for Judith, how he took her from the water, held her and kissed her. This was no man who beat his wife! Alan frowned as he began to realize that he had been played for a fool.

  He went back into the manor house where he found Alice Chatworth crossing the great hall. “I would like a word with you, my lady,” he said, his fingers tightening on her arm.

  She gasped at the pain, then smiled. “Of course, Sir Alan. My time is yours to command.”

  He drew her to the side of the room, into the shadows. “You have used me, and I don’t like that.”

  “Used you? Pray, how so, sir?”

  “Don’t play the coy virgin with me. I know of the men who frequent your bed. You are a woman of some intelligence, I am sure, and you have manipulated me for your own purpose.”

  “Release me or I will scream!”

  His hand dug deeper into her arm. “Don’t I please you? My friends tell me you’re not averse to pain.”

  Alice glared at him. “What is it you wish to say to me?”

  “I don’t care to be used. Your lies could have given Lady Judith great trouble, and I would have been the cause.”

  “Didn’t you say you wished a few moments alone with her? I gave you that time—that’s all.”

  “By trickery! She is a good woman and happily wed, and I’m no villain to resort to rape.”

  “Then you do desire her?” Alice smiled.

  He released her quickly. “What man wouldn’t? She is beautiful.”

  “No!” Alice hissed. “She’s not as beautiful—” She stopped herself.

  Alan smiled. “As you, Lady Alice? No, you are wrong. I have watched Lady Judith for days, and I have come to know her. She is not only beautiful on the outside, but inwards as well. When she is old and not so lovely, she will be well loved. But you! Your beauty is on the outside alone. If it were taken away from you, only a querulous, evil-minded, vicious woman would remain.”

  “I shall hate you for this!” Alice said in a deadly voice.

  “Someday every second you have spent hating will show on your face,” Alan noted calmly. “Whatever your feelings for me, don’t think I can be used again.” He turned his back on her and left her alone.

  Alice watched his retreating back but her vengeance was for Judith rather than for Alan. The woman had been the cause of all her problems. Nothing had been the same since Gavin had decided to marry the bitch. Now Alice was insulted by a young man because of the deviousness of that Revedoune woman. Alice was even more determined to put an end to a marriage that
she considered wrong.

  “Judith, sweet. Stay in bed,” Gavin murmured against her sleepy cheek. “You need rest, and the water may have given you a chill.”

  Judith didn’t answer. She was sated with their lovemaking and feeling drowsy and languid.

  He nuzzled his face against her neck once more and slipped from the bed. He dressed quickly, watching her all the while. When he was dressed, he smiled at her, kissed her cheeks and left the room.

  Stephen met him at the foot of the stairs. “I can’t walk through a room that I don’t hear more gossip of you!”

  “What now?” Gavin asked suspiciously.

  “Only that you beat your wife and throw her in troughs of water, then flaunt her before everyone.”

  Gavin smiled. “It’s all true.”

  Stephen returned his brother’s grin. “Now we understand each other. I thought you didn’t know how to treat a woman. Is she asleep?”

  “Yes. She will stay there the night.” Gavin lifted one brow. “I thought you would have a hogshead of wine ready.”

  “I do,” Stephen grinned. “I didn’t want you to feel the lesser man by my drinking twice as much as you.”

  “You!” Gavin snorted. “My younger brother? Didn’t you know I got drunk the first time before you were born?”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “It’s true. I’ll tell you the story though it is a very long one.”

  Stephen slapped his brother on the back. “We have all night. The morning is when we’ll repent what we’ve done.”

  Gavin chuckled. “You shall repent with your ugly Scottish bride, but I will wearily lay my head in my beautiful wife’s lap and kindly allow her to cosset me.”

  Stephen groaned. “You are a cruel man!”

  For both brothers, the night was a special time of closeness. They celebrated their release from Demari. They celebrated Gavin’s good fortune in his marriage, and they commiserated together on the prospect of Stephen’s forthcoming one.

  “I’ll give her back to her people if she disobeys me,” Stephen said. The wine they drank was so bad that they had to strain it through their teeth, but neither of them noticed.

  “Two disobedient wives!” Gavin said in a slur as he raised his mug. “If Judith were to obey me, I would think a devil had stolen her mind.”

  “And left only her body?” Stephen leered.

  “I will call you out for that,” Gavin said as he fumbled for his sword.

  “She wouldn’t have me,” Stephen responded as he refilled his cup.

  “You don’t think so? She certainly seemed pleased with Demari.” Gavin changed from happiness to sadness in moments, as only a drunk could.

  “No, she hated the man.”

  “But she bears his child!” Gavin said, sounding like a little boy about to cry.

  “You have no sense, brother! The child is yours, not Demari’s.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. She told me.”

  Gavin sat at the thick table silently for a moment then started to rise, but his head swam. “You’re sure? Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She said she wanted to keep some small thing to herself.”

  Gavin sat down heavily. “She considers my son a small thing?”

  “No. You don’t understand women.”

  “And you do?” Gavin asked archly.

  Stephen refilled his brother’s mug. “No more than you do, I’m sure. Perhaps even less, if that is possible. Raine could explain what she said better than I. She said you already had the Revedoune lands and Alice, and she would give you no more.”

  Gavin’s face blackened as he rose. Then suddenly he calmed and sat down again, a slight smile on his face. “She is a witch, isn’t she? She swings her hips before me until I am blind with desire. She curses me when I merely talk to another woman.”

  “One you have freely admitted you loved.”

  Gavin waved his hand as if that didn’t matter. “And yet she holds the key that would unlock all secrets and free us both from the strain that is between us.”

  “I don’t see any reluctance on your part,” Stephen said.

  Gavin chuckled. “No, none on mine, but I have been reluctant to…force myself on her. I thought that Demari meant something to her.”

  “Only a means to save your unappreciative neck.”

  Gavin smiled. “Pass me that wine. We have more to celebrate tonight than a mere Scots princess.”

  Stephen grabbed the jug before Gavin could touch it. “You are a cruel brother.”

  “I learned it from my wife,” Gavin smiled and filled his own mug.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I CANNOT ALLOW THIS!” ELA SAID, HER BACKBONE HELD rigid. She stood beside Alice in a little partitioned chamber in the castle.

  “Since when do you allow or disallow what I want?” Alice sneered. “My life is my own and all you do is help me dress.”

  “It isn’t right that you throw yourself at this man. There isn’t a day that some man doesn’t ask to marry you. Can’t you content yourself with one of them?”

  Alice turned on her maid. “And let her have him? I would die first.”

  “Do you really want him for your own?” Ela persisted.

  “What does that matter?” Alice demanded as she adjusted her veil and circlet. “He is mine and will stay mine.”

  The stairway was dark when she left the room. Alice had soon discovered that the court of King Henry was an easy place to find out what she wanted to know. There were many who were willing, for a price, to do anything that she asked. Her spies had told her that Gavin sat below with his brother, away from his wife. Alice knew how befuddled a man could get with drink, and she planned to use the opportunity to the best advantage. He wouldn’t be able to resist her when his mind swam from drink.

  She cursed when she reached the great hall and neither Gavin nor his brother were in sight. “Where is Lord Gavin?” Alice asked harshly of a yawning servant girl. The floor was cluttered with sleeping retainers on straw pallets.

  “He left—that’s all I know.”

  Alice grabbed the girl’s arm. “Where?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Alice pulled a gold coin from her pocket and watched the girl’s eyes gleam. “What would you do for this?”

  The girl came fully awake. “I would do anything.”

  “Good,” Alice smiled. “Then listen to me carefully.”

  Judith woke from a sound sleep to a faint scraping at the door. She stretched out her arm before she opened her eyes, only to find Gavin’s side of the bed empty. She sat up, knitting her brows, then remembered he’d said something about saying good-bye to Stephen.

  The scratching at the door continued. Joan, who often stayed with her mistress when Gavin was away, wasn’t in the room. Reluctantly, Judith threw the covers back and slipped her arms into the emerald-green velvet of her bedrobe. “What is it?” she asked as she opened the door to a servant girl.

  “I don’t know, my lady,” the girl said with a smirk. “I was told that you were needed and must come straightaway.”

  “Who said this? My husband?”

  The girl shrugged in reply.

  Judith frowned. The court crawled with anonymous messages, and all of them seemed to lead to places she did not care to be. Yet perhaps her mother needed her. More likely Gavin was too drunk to mount the stairs and she must help him. She smiled at the thought of the tongue-lashing she would give him.

  She followed the girl down the dark stone stairs to the floor below. It seemed darker than usual; some of the torches on the walls hadn’t been lit. Cut within the twelve-foot-thick walls were dreary rooms, not favored by the nobler guests. The servant girl stopped before one of these rooms that lay near the steep circular stairwell.

  The girl gave Judith a look that she didn’t understand, then disappeared into the darkness. Judith was aggravated at this skulking about and meant to say so when a woman’s voice ca
ught her attention.

  “Gavin,” the woman whispered loudly.

  It was a whisper of passion. Judith could only remain frozen in place. Tinder was struck and a candle lit. Judith could see clearly then. Alice, her thin, bony body nude from the waist up, lay half under Gavin. The candlelight revealed his bronze skin to advantage—there was none of it hidden. He lay on his stomach, his bare legs covering Alice’s.

  “No!” Judith whispered, her hand to her mouth, her eyes blurring with tears. She wanted it to be a nightmare, but it was not. He had lied to her, over and over again. And she had come so close to believing him!

  She backed away from them, Gavin not moving, Alice holding the candle, watching Judith, smiling at her from her position under Gavin. “No!” was all Judith could say. She moved farther and farther back, unaware of the staircase with no railing.

  Her feet unsteady, Judith was not even conscious at first that she stepped into midair. She screamed as she fell down one step, then two, then five. Frantically, she clawed at the air, screaming again as her body fell sideways and missed the stairs altogether. Judith hit the floor below with a horrible thud, her fall finally cushioned by the pallet of one of King Henry’s knights.

  “What was that?” Gavin asked in a slurred voice as he raised his head.

  “It was nothing,” Alice murmured, her heart beating quickly with pure joy. Perhaps the woman had killed herself and Gavin would truly be Alice’s once again.

  Gavin raised himself on one elbow. “My God! Alice! What are you doing here?” His eyes roamed over her nude body. The only thought that occurred to him was that he had not realized she was so scrawny. There was no desire for that body he had once loved.

  Alice’s joy was killed by the look in Gavin’s eyes. “You do…not remember?” Her words were halting. She was truly stunned by Gavin’s reaction. She had been so certain that once she held him again, he would be hers.

  Gavin frowned at her. He had been drunk, true—but not so drunk that he didn’t remember the night. He knew full well that he hadn’t gone to Alice’s bed, nor had he asked her to his.

  His accusations were ready, but suddenly the great hall on the floor below them was alive with light and noise. Men shouted to each other. Then a bellow that fair shook the rafters rose: “Montgomery!”