by Susan King
Nicholas whistled low. “A large purse for a journey. He trusts no one, then.”
Peter pushed away from the bench and went to a side table to fetch a cup of wine. “Some of his most loyal supporters are swinging to the rebel’s side,” he said. “Arundel, York, the earl of Surrey. There are others as well.”
“Not York now,” Wat told them. “He has offered John a thousand marks to ride past Alnwick Castle.”
“Whitehawke is among those who still support the king regardless,” Peter said.
Nicholas nodded. “Thus ensuring the safety of Graymere Keep. I misdoubt the king will come here, either, but we are fortified to the last man, and the battlements are prepared for any attack. But—Peter, I want you to take several men and escort the ladies and the children to Evincourt.”
“To the countess’s castle near Lancaster?” Peter asked.
“Aye. They will have better safety so far west. John cannot cover the whole long bowl of England in one winter’s trek. You will have returned before aught has happened here. If anything does,” Nicholas added. “With God’s luck, we will see no fighting here at Hawksmoor.”
Peter cocked an eyebrow. “Your lady wife will be greatly displeased if you send her away.”
“She has been displeased with me before,” Nicholas drawled.
At the sudden sound of the latch scraping on the door, Nicholas glanced around. Emlyn, still wearing her outercloak, her face wind-chapped and rosy, stepped into the room, pulling off her rabbit-fur gloves as she moved gracefully down the length of the room, her long cloak sweeping the rushes. Winter sunlight turned her braids to smooth golden flax beneath the gauzy veil.
She tilted her head suddenly, and a brilliant sunbeam flooded across her translucent cheek, setting the golden flecks in her blue eyes to dancing. Nicholas felt a swirl of warmth in his loins as he watched her, and then a stronger surge, beyond physical excitement: complete, surrendering love.
And anticipation. In the next few moments, he would present her with a yule gift that she would not soon forget.
As she advanced the length of the sunlit hall, her cloak whispering on the rushes, Emlyn could see only the arm and back of the visitor who stood partially obscured by Nicholas and Peter, all three with their backs to her. Another messenger, she decided, one in the long stream of riders dispatched to and from Hawksmoor in the past few weeks.
She saw that the man was wide as a barrel, wearing tarnished steel and a dark red cloak. News from Ashbourne; her heart quickened. Pulling off her gloves as she came forward, she saw that Nicholas beckoned Peter close and murmured a few words.
Peter gave him a startled glance and left the room quickly through a side door, without even a courteous word or nod to her. That, she thought, was most unlike Peter.
Halfway across the room, she called, “My lord, I was told we had a visitor—” She paused in midstride. recognizing the grizzled hair, the dark-eyed, heavy-jowled face as the man turned. Her smile faded into openmouthed shock.
“Wat!” she cried. The gloves hit the floor as she picked up her skirts and hurried forward. “Wat!” Running toward his opening arms, she hugged him fiercely. “Dear God! How is it you are here? Is aught wrong at Ashbourne? What then of Guy?”
“Ashbourne is safe,” Nicholas interrupted. “My father has released Wat from his duties there. I think that we have need of such an experienced soldier here at Hawksmoor, if Wat will consent to stay.” Emlyn smiled up at Nicholas, her arm wrapped around Wat’s thick forearm.
Wat bowed his head. “Thank you, my lord. I gladly accept.” His voice was deep and warm, his solid, unassuming manner reassuring. Emlyn realized how much she had missed him.
“Sir Walter brings word that the king advances toward York with his army,” Nicholas said.
She looked at him in alarm. “North? Might he come here?”
“That we cannot know, my lady,” Nicholas said, his eyes leveling into hers, serious, but with a curious silver light in them. “But for now, there is another matter for your concern.”
“What is that?” she asked, as the side door opened and Peter returned, his fair-skinned face a bit flushed. A man came in behind him. Emlyn’s hands flew up to cover her mouth.
He was tall, thin as a reed in a drooping brown tunic, his blond hair, streaked with brown, swinging long and untidy over his brow and wide, bony shoulders. He stood a few paces away and looked at her, then turned his hands, palm up.
“Oh, God,” she breathed. Tears started in her eyes. “Oh, God.” She took a step forward, hesitating, her heart pounding fiercely, her breath constricted. Then she ran the last few steps into his arms.
“Emlyn,” Guy said.
Wrapping her arms around him, she could feel the bony outline of his ribs through the tunic, and she sensed his fatigue, almost a frailty, as he embraced her. Her brother had been like a blond bear, more muscular in build than Nicholas, as strong as men twice his breadth. He had been known for his solid strength, but Emlyn could have lifted his weight now. “Guy,” she breathed, her tears wetting his bristly golden chin. “When—?”
“I was released in November,” he said. Emlyn noticed then the gaunt hollows in his face and the purplish crescents beneath his blue eyes. Creases lined his mouth, and the somber set of his eyes and jaw made him seem much older, than when she had last seen him over a year ago.
“My lady,” Wat said, “Lord Guy arrived home at Ashbourne as weak as a newborn, and needed time to recover strength to travel before we could come to Hawksmoor.”
“But why did no one tell me that he was free?” she asked, puzzled. “Wat, you wrote to Nicholas.”
“I did know, Emlyn,” Nicholas said. “But I said naught of it at the time.” She turned her wide, questioning gaze to him. “Guy was quite ill, and insisted on our silence until he could come here himself to be with his family.”
“You have been ill?” She looked up at Guy.
“He greatly needed food and liquids and rest,” Wat explained. “He was near starved to death in that dungeon cell.”
Emlyn gasped. Peter nodded grimly. “ ’Tis a common method of King John, my lady. Starving a prisoner is more economical than keeping him well-fed. Many have died that way in the king’s prisons. John has been known to call it accidental, and apologize for his forgetfulness.”
“Dear Lord,” Emlyn breathed, “how cruel. But how is it you were let go? The king refused to reinstate you because of the charge of high treason.”
“Any charge has its price these days, for John,” Guy replied. “And ’tis thanks to your lord that my price was paid.”
She whipped her glance around. Nicholas had been quietly watching them, his eyes a muted grayish-green, glowing above deeply rouged cheeks. That blush, evidence of his vulnerable discomfiture, brought a smile to her lips. She had taken in so much joy in these last few moments, she wondered if ’twere possible to burst with it. “Nicholas? You paid the ransom?”
He nodded briefly, his eyes locked with hers. “I would not pay ransom for my own castle, as I have said. But there was no other way to see Guy free. The king persisted in his charge of treason. Only his purse showed any sense, in the end.”
Guy laughed. “I congratulate you on your fine marriage, sister. I could not have arranged better for you than this man.”
Holding out her hand to Nicholas, she answered. “I would have accepted no one else,” she said as his long, warm fingers closed possessively over hers.
“Again I say you nay, Emlyn. The king cuts a wide, bloody swath up the length of England. I want you removed from danger.” As Nicholas strode rapidly across the bailey, Emlyn hurried in his wake, clutching her cloak closed against the bitter morning chill.
“But Hawksmoor is too far west for the king to bother with us,” she insisted. “You told Peter so last even.” He shot her an exasperated glance and entered the stable, Emlyn on his heels like a hound.
“We have been separated through most of our marriage,” she argued as th
ey entered the warmer, straw-insulated stable. A yawning groom, piling up fresh hay with a pitchfork, threw a startled glance at the baron and his lady, then pulled at his hood and hastily left.
“Do not ask me to leave you now, Nicholas,” she continued.
“Emlyn, the king puts to the torch, each morn, the very house in which he slept the night. True, he may never reach this far west, and Hawksmoor will likely go untouched,” Nicholas conceded over his shoulder. He advanced down the central aisle with Emlyn close behind, their steps muffled by thick straw. “But King John is not a predictable man. If he bears enough malice toward me for my hand in the charter, he will send his routiers to burn me out. He knows I will pay no fee to gain his lenience.”
“Why should he single you out, when there are others closer to his route? He is at Pontefract, you said.”
Nicholas halted in midstride, and Emlyn collided into his back. He turned and grabbed her by the upper shoulders. “And on his way to York, which is not so far from here, even in the dead of winter. The weather has not been so fierce as to make the moors impassable. Think, Emlyn. Why might he come here?” He shook her a little, and her hood slipped back as she scowled up at him. “Think. Who has the king’s ear?” he asked.
“Whitehawke,” she said. “But your father would not do that. Even he would not betray his own son.”
Nicholas looked steadily at her for a moment. In the pale light that cascaded through the wide entrance of the stable, his eyes glinted with the same steely sheen as his hauberk. “Would he not?” he asked coldly.
“Nicholas,” she said, touching his arm, hard muscle sheathed in cold metal beneath her fingers. “Whitehawke will soften to our marriage, given time. For all his anger, he seems a pious man. He does penance daily by forgoing meat, he has founded an abbey to pray for his soul, he—”
Nicholas laughed, a loud, harsh bark. “Know you why he constantly seeks to placate God?” He tightened his grip on her arms and tilted his face toward hers, his expression as fierce as if he faced a warrior rather than his wife. Emlyn pulled back, drawing in her breath.
“N-nay,” she said in a small voice.
“Because he fears eternal hell for murdering my mother.”
“Nicholas,” she whispered. “Nay—”
He turned away from her abruptly, rubbing his temples wearily. In one of the dark stalls, a horse nickered softly.
“He accused my mother of adultery,” he said over his shoulder. “He imprisoned her, and she died there.”
Emlyn put a trembling hand to her lips. Though she had heard the rumor, she had not thought in terms of such shocking cruelty. She had assumed Blanche’s death was some kind of accident for which Whitehawke had been blamed.
Stepping forward, she put a hand on his cloaked shoulder. He angled his head away from her in taut rejection. She understood, suddenly, how stubbornly he held on to his hatred and anger. As if the onslaught of his pain tore through in her own breast, she took a deep breath against its weight, and realized that he had never allowed healing to take place within his heart.
Tears moistened her eyes as she moved to stand in front of him, leaning her forehead to his chest. Beneath cold, unyielding steel, she felt the gentle movement of his breath, the strong, steady throb of his heart. Though he rested a hand on her upper back, she felt a tension, a distance, in him.
“You never spoke of this,” she said softly.
“Now I have,” he said coldly. “A man who murders his wife for adulterous behavior, with no proof of her sin, has no shred of honor. Naught would gainsay him from betraying his son.”
“But she died imprisoned. He did not kill her, she died while there, of illness, perhaps.”
He stared above her head. “I was seven years old,” he said woodenly. “I was sent to live at Evincourt with Lady Julian and her husband. Whitehawke had placed my mother under what he claimed was a genteel confinement, such as many a lord has given his wife. Some men see no harm in locking up their wives for a spell. But Whitehawke found her dead one day.” He swiveled his eyes down to hers; the chill gray gleam in them pierced like a blade. “Know you why he eats no meat?”
“ ’Tis his penance,” she whispered.
“My mother died of starvation.”
“Dear God,” Emlyn said. Deep inside, her belly turned with shock and dismay. She felt sick. “He suffers much guilt, to exact a similar penance on himself.”
Nicholas huffed out a short breath. “As if ’twould help.”
Emlyn stared up at him, seeing the dark sprinkle of stubble across his cheeks, the beautiful, muted colors when the clear light shone through his eyes, and the deep hurt that lingered in the depths of his glance. “You were very young,” she said softly, “to lose your mother. No wonder you bear such hatred for him.”
“ ’Tis hard no matter my age, Emlyn. ’Twas senseless and cruel. And the sentiment I bear him is not one-sided, as you have seen. He has hated me since I was born, I think. He would betray me to the king in the blink of an eye.”
“But there are times when he has shown courtesy to you. He has seemed to accept our marriage with little argument beyond disinheritance. You have said that oftentimes he disinherits you with one hand and pulls you back again with the other. That seems more like fits of anger than hardened hatred.”
“He disinherits me because he does not truly believe that I am his blood son,” he said. “He accused my mother of adultery several times over the years, and doubts my paternity. And he has never let me forget that uncertainty of his.”
“Nicholas—” she began, but he silenced her by pulling her to him in a sudden, fierce embrace. Soon he relaxed his hold and rested his cheek against her smoothly braided head.
“Emlyn,” he said gruffly, “this matter between my father and me cannot be eased quickly. Honor thy father, the priests teach us. ’Tis the hardest task I have ever had, and I am not capable of meeting it.”
“You can, Nicholas,” she said gently.
“You are the very soul of loyalty and honor, Emlyn. Did you know? I have watched it in you, so ready, so easy. Loyalty to family guides you and shapes you. You are angered by injustice as I am, but your anger never festers to hate. Would that I could learn from you.” Stroking her hair, he traced his fingers down to lift her chin, looking at her evenly. “But for now, try to understand what exists between Whitehawke and me. Even your sweet, earnest nature cannot mend this rift.”
He lowered his lips to hers, and his gentle kiss touched that deep place in her that always responded so fully to him. She sensed that his turmoil had been quelled and set away once again, far from her reach.
“Harken to me,” he said, his lips warm against her forehead. “You must leave Hawksmoor for now. I must know you safe, Emlyn.”
Drawing back, she looked in his eyes, like mossy flecks over glinting stone. “But I cannot leave for yet a few days. The village priest asked me to attend Twelfth Night mass in his church. As your baroness, and because you are banned from mass still, I must accept. Then, my lord—if you promise to keep safe—I will go meek as any good wife to her husband’s will.”
“A few days, then. I will vow anything to hear such obeisance from you.” He smiled wanly, a crooked lift of the corner of his mouth.
She wrinkled up her nose. “Alas, my lord, you will not hear it often from me, so honor my request ere you do.”
“We have bargained like this before, I recall,” he said. “See to your packing, but leave my windows in peace.”
She laughed, remembering. “My lord, I would not disturb the windows here, for I will soon return.”
Nicholas smiled, then brought his mouth down to hers in a crushing, searing kiss that tore the breath from her and sent waves of pleasure from her hairline to her toes. He slipped a hand inside her cloak to stroke the curve of her waist and hip, moving up to round over her breast. She gasped at the powerful surge of desire that quickened her breath and pulsed through her lower body, filling her with lush readiness. “Si
rrah,” she whispered, half laughing, “we are in a stable.”
“Aye,” he growled, and traced his lips along her cheek to meet her mouth again greedily. “Think you the stable boy will be back soon?”
She shook her head and circled her arms around his neck, pressing her body eagerly to his.
Chapter Twenty-One
A cold, wispy blanket of fog curled around the village, blurring the already uneasy distinction between white-shrouded earth and pale sky, as Emlyn and Alarice emerged together, shivering, from the portal of the square Saxon-built church.
Bidding the priest farewell after Twelfth Day mass, they hurried to their horses, where a groom waited to boost them into their saddles. Nearby, six armed guards were mounted beside a covered van, driven by a servant, which held the children and their nursemaid. Once the ladies were mounted, the group moved out onto the crusty ice-rimed road to travel the few miles back to Hawksmoor.
Emlyn took up the reins of her chestnut mare. “Set us a quick pace, William,” she said to the young serjeant who headed the escort. “More snow threatens before long, I think.” Nodding agreement, he gestured the group forward.
“ ’Tis fearsomely cold and damp of a sudden,” Alarice said with a tight little smile.
Smiling back, Emlyn reminded herself that Alarice had shown some effort to be kind lately, talking to Emlyn after a long, resentful silence and smiling at Nicholas once again. Any grudge she bore regarding their marriage appeared to be in the past. Cool, polite friendship seemed to be offered.
When Alarice had asked to accompany Emlyn to the church for the Twelfth Day mass, Emlyn had suggested that they ride their horses and leave the van for the children and their nursemaid. She had felt a need for some vigorous exercise, but now the raw, bleak weather made her long for the comfort of hearth fires and thick enclosing walls. And leaving Nicholas so that she could fulfill her duties as baroness had little appeal, since she was to depart for Evincourt the next day.