by Robyn Carr
Anne would have stayed and let them find her in his arms. She would have braved the rope with him, but for one thing. They had been as one, night after beautiful night. She had never mentioned a child to Dylan. She hoped one had been conceived. If Dylan must die, she would bring his child to life. For that reason only, she left him.
When she pushed open the cask room door, the guard was still slumped in sleep outside. Dawn would break soon. She would have to hurry to her room, lest she be found. She did not worry about the sleeping guard – let her mother or brothers find him and punish him. There would be no more nights in the cask room. Marcella would have her way.
“So this is what you have been about.”
Anne gasped and turned toward her sister’s voice. Divina stood between the common hall and cookrooms, her arms crossed over her ample chest, one shoulder leaning against the wall. She smiled with superiority. Anne could not prevent the hot flush as it rose over her face. Her lips were white with fear, her cheeks blazed with shame.
“Divina – ”
“Night after night, little sister? I wonder what will happen to all your pretty gowns now?”
“Divina, do not be foolish! We need this alliance with Lord Forbes ... all of us ... you ...”
“Me?” she asked, laughing. “Through you, you must mean. But I perceive a better way.”
“Nay, Divina, it cannot be! He does not ...” Her voice trailed off as she regarded her sister’s cold eyes, taunting smile. They both stared at each other while the guard slept on, peacefully dreaming dreams spun by old Minerva’s herbs.
“Anything is possible,” Divina said coyly.
“Do not lie to yourself, Divina. Not now! Mother wished for the earl to consider you, but he would not. He is not eager for just any bride: he is rich and has an heir ... and mistresses,” she lied. But the lie brought some reaction to Divina’s narrowing eyes. “Divina, I will speak to the earl about a betrothal for you--”
“You let him spoil you then,” Divina said. “Why else would you creep into his cell? You surprise me, Anne. I thought you were more clever. I thought you--”
Anne’s face lost color. She tried to meet Divina’s eyes, but she was caught in a snare and could not lie well.
Divina chuckled. “How foolish we all have been. We thought you had begun to love Lord Forbes. He will not take you now.”
“He loves me, Divina, he told me so. Lord Forbes will not take you, no matter what you tell him. He may cast me aside, true, but you will not stand in my stead. Divina, use caution. If I am wed to the earl I can help you. If he rides away from Raedelle in anger ...”
“You have become vain,” Divina said. “He pampers you and buys you trinkets and you think any sin will be pardonable in his eyes. Poor Anne. It will be the convent for you after all.”
“Why do you hate me so?” Anne asked, shaking her head forlornly, tears coming to her eyes. “Why could we never care for each other?”
Divina’s lip curled and her eyes glittered in much the same way Marcella’s would. “Because you have always taken what was to be mine. You were Minerva’s pride, Father’s joy, and now you aspire to be a countess. But it will not be, little Anne. Minerva is dead, the earl will change his mind, and even Father will not forgive you this.”
Anne’s eyes grew round at this revelation. She was stunned to think Divina had ever been jealous of her. “Minerva took me because Mother would have none of me,” she said. “Mother favored you, clothed you well so that you could catch a rich husband. And Father--”
“Father,” Divina said in a huff. “Father, who always said ‘Why do you ignore this pretty child?’ and ‘Anne is too good for the convent.’ Father held you on his knee while I was left to follow Mother and beg for a scrap of attention. And did I betray them? Never once – I am pure. You have lain with our enemy and this time you will not take what should be mine.”
Divina turned away, her skirts swirling, and made for the stairs. “Divina,” Anne called, but her sister did not turn.
Anne stood for several minutes, the guard’s snoring distant in her ears. Her trembling slowly abated, but she could barely move. I have failed again, she thought. Should I have denied it? she asked herself. But the truth would come soon enough. She had meant to live on for Dylan’s sake, she had hoped to bear him a child. Now she did not dare predict the outcome of the day.
***
“Madam, I have something to tell you,” Divina said. A maid was pouring water into the washbowl and her mother was sitting up in bed. “It is important, private.” The maid glanced at Marcella and, at her nod, left the room.
Marcella swung her legs from under the quilt and reached for a wrapper. Her graying hair, mussed and hanging to her shoulders, made her long face look sallow. “Be quick, Divina. I have business this morning.”
“Aye, madam. Do you know what your youngest child has been about? While our guard sleeps in the hall, Anne has been in the cask room with our prisoner.” Divina smiled at her mother’s shocked expression. “DeFrayne has spoiled her; guilt burns her cheeks and she begged me to be silent.”
“You ... saw her?” Marcella asked in a whisper, her eyes blazing and almost wild.
“I left her moments ago. She uses her own key and wore only a thin bedgown. ‘Tis plain enough they--”
“Nooooo,” Marcella shrieked, jumping to her feet. Her pale complexion became pasty white and her mouth twisted. “No!
Not again! She rushed toward her bower door, her wrapper still below her shoulders. Anne had not protested the imprisonment, nor the execution. She had said nothing at all. How could she have gone to him ... and why?
Marcella stopped suddenly, her hand on the latch, and leaned her forehead against the cool oak. “No,” she murmured. Could she love a deFrayne? How could such escape her notice ... there must have been signs.
“The earl will not take her now,” Divina said from behind her. Marcella could not mistake the delight in her daughter’s voice. She turned back to Divina, slowly trying to grasp the situation. Her heart pounded in her chest; her head felt light, and she was suddenly dizzy. Ferris had argued to spare him. Ferris knew! How had they managed to fool her?
“I’m sure when Lord Forbes learns the truth, he will find a pure bride more--”
“Hush,” Marcella snapped. “Let me think.”
She shook her head to try to clear the haze that had engulfed her. Her daughter had soiled herself with a deFrayne. Blood lust seeped into her heart and she clenched her fists. Damn her, she thought. If it was not enough that her husband had lusted after the bitch, Daphne, now her daughter did the same. And if that insult was not enough, she had thrown away the single chance of using the earl’s influence to gain power and wealth. She snarled in rage. The girl had done only one thing right since her birth – she had captured a rich and influential earl. “I will beat her ‘til she bleeds,” Marcella muttered.
“The earl will not find her so pretty then,” Divina said.
“Indeed not, he--” Marcella stopped abruptly. “No one else knows?” she asked Divina.
“I came here straightaway, madam. I thought you should ...”
“Good. Good. The earl must never know.” Her mind was tangled with ideas, plans. Anne had never argued for Dylan’s life, nor had she tried to sneak him out of Raedelle. That could only mean one thing – Anne intended to marry the earl because Dylan was doomed to die. Then how, Marcella wondered, did Anne hope to pass off her lost virtue? Had the earl had her first?
Forbes had panted after her skirts like a dog with a scent – perhaps she had yielded to Forbes to cover her misdeed. Anne was either a very stupid wench, or she was clever enough to be certain Lord Forbes would still take her.
“She must be very confident that the earl will not begrudge her lost innocence,” Marcella mumbled, merely thinking aloud.
“She will be very surprised then. The earl will find me--”
“Don’t be a fool! The earl does not want you! Have you not seen eno
ugh of his besotted lust to be convinced? He wants Anne. So, he will take her as she comes.”
“But Mother--”
“If you say one word about this I will have you stripped and lashed. My silly daughter has risked our alliance with Ayliffe, but it is not gone yet. Soon enough, I will understand her plan.”
“But Mother, if you tell Lord Forbes the truth and offer him a pure bride, he will be grateful. I was to marry first – you cannot let her go to him now. It would be a disgrace. What man of reputation would take a whore to wife? She is a whore, I am a virgin!”
Marcella barely heard her daughter’s arguments and pleas. She was thinking of Anne, whom she had always considered a bother and nuisance – Anne, whose birth had caused her not only great physical pain, but also heartache. Anne’s birth had changed her, had brought the hard truth home, and she had hardly been able to look at her since.
She had ignored the child – thus Anne had never struggled to please the way the other children had. Then, with the earl’s betrothal, Anne’s opinion of herself had become lofty. She threatened to withhold the earl’s influence from her family if they did not tread carefully on her good nature. Hah, Marcella thought. That was before. Now Anne would work hard to see her family bettered, or the earl would be told the truth.
“My daughter will use her wiles to help our cause now,” she said. “Aye, my daughter will work hard to please me now.”
“Mother, you cannot mean it! You must not allow--”
“Shut up, Divina! If you say one word, I will beat you until you bleed!”
“Mother ...”
Marcella ignored the tears in her daughter’s voice. The sky was growing light. “Dress yourself. Now I have even better reason to see the bastard hang.”
Divina crept from her mother’s room, her head down and tears wetting her cheeks. She walked listlessly toward her own chamber. She greatly regretted her misjudgment. Had she been wiser, she would have used Anne’s offered influence for her own case. Now, since she had turned the information over to her mother, it was useless.
Marcella dressed hurriedly, not even taking the time to have her hair brushed. She pulled a wimple over her knotted mane and went hurriedly to Anne’s bower. She opened the door and saw Anne, fully dressed, seated on her bed. Anne slowly turned her gaze from the emerging dawn, toward her mother.
“He will die in any case,” Marcella said.
Anne, dry-eyed and grim, lifted her chin slightly. She would not stand.
“How do you plan to trick the earl? Did he steal your virginity first so that you could take deFrayne between your legs without reprisal from your husband?”
Anne stared at her mother levelly. She would admit to nothing. She would not cooperate.
“Whatever your intention, daughter, you will help your family now – you will urge Lord Forbes to do right by your brothers, or I will tell him what I know. Remember, Anne, that at any moment of my choosing, I can tell Ayliffe that you cuckolded him with deFrayne.”
“At any moment, madam, that you feel you can afford the cost to the Gifford family,” she replied calmly.
Marcella smiled. “We understand each other. I confess, I did not think the day would ever come.” Marcella slowly pulled the bower door closed, leaving Anne to consider what had been said.
Chapter Seven
Marcella was seated in the hall when Quentin entered. He was alone and she hoped that Bart was staying to stand beside her, but he dashed her hopes instantly. “Will you come into the courtyard and bid us farewell and God’s blessings, madam?” Quentin asked. As Marcella looked at her firstborn child, she thought how strongly Quentin resembled her father and brother, both dead over twenty years now. She had always favored Quentin, but she understood Bart better. Bart was the last one she expected to cross her.
“If you rescind your decision and await the deFrayne hanging before you depart, of course I will pray for you. Otherwise ...”
“Nay, my lady mother, I cannot do that. I regret to say that had you quickly ended his life, I would have been standing beside you, but these many days of waiting have brought me a vision or two. I see that Father is completely right – you satisfy an old vengeance when these deFrayne men are actually prisoners of York, and should be given to him to settle any score. It was not a deFrayne-Gifford war in which they were captured. We should be with our father now.”
“Then you will not change your mind?”
He slowly shook his head, and she could see by Quentin’s eyes that he had managed to form a pact with Bart. “I would stay to change your mind but for one thing--our father is fighting for the duke alone. I hope he can forgive us for our delay, for this is nothing more than folly that keeps us here.”
“You brought the deFraynes to me,” she nearly shouted.
“Aye,” he shouted back. “And then I buried Sir Wayland. Do you know what I felt? My fiercest rival, from an argument so old that I cannot even remember the cause, was finally dead. And I felt mourning come to me. Mourning! I have been meeting Wayland in contests for ten years, as my brothers have met Wayland’s brothers, as men-at-arms in green have met blue for so many years. But when we passed on the road, or in the feasting celebrations at tourneys and fairs, they did not raise arms against us. Nothing more than heated words crossed, never swords or axes. Had we been captured, I doubt we would have been treated thus. I think the conflict could finally be resolved if you would release deFrayne.”
“Bart would not agree with that,” she said.
“Bart is a young fool, and you have done much to encourage him. But even Bart sees the folly in angering our liege lord. He will not stand by you while you whittle away his only opportunity to prosper.”
Marcella frowned blackly. How dare Quentin place such an accusation on her? Anne had done more to threaten the earl’s support than she ever had. But she could not say anything. The moment that information was out of her hands, Anne might be out of the earl’s good graces. She was not foolish enough to think that Earl Ayliffe would continue to support the Giffords without his chosen bride.
“Let him live,” Quentin entreated.
“Never! He must die!”
Quentin’s shoulders slumped in exasperation. “Then carry on your revenge alone, madam. You may, in your action, spawn another six decades of hatred and death.”
Marcella’s mouth was set in a vitriolic grimace, her hands so tight on the arms of her chair that her knuckles were bleached.
Quentin turned to leave. She half rose, tears of rage stinging in her eyes. “They killed my father,” she shouted at his back.
Quentin faced her one last time before leaving. “Someone has to be first to stop the killing.”
There was nothing more she could say. When Quentin was a boy she could incense him with tales of her father’s wrongful death because Quentin could not bear the thought of losing a treasured father. But too soon it became only the death of a grandfather her sons had never known.
Marcella told her children, when she deemed them old enough to really appreciate her tale, that she had been sought after for marriage by a member of the deFrayne household, but her father, a Gifford knight, refused to be allied with those treacherous heathens. Her father’s murder, then, was in retaliation, since he gave his daughter to the Gifford heir. It was a lie. Marcella had not been desired by any man. Not even her own husband.
Marcella had suffered unbearable pain at the hands of the deFraynes, though her father’s death was incidental to her suffering. Her children would not understand the truth, and she was too ashamed to tell it. Marcella had been fourteen when her older brother was knighted and, like their father, pledged allegiance to Lord Gifford, Ferris’s father. Ferris was the second Gifford son, but the eldest was weak and frivolous and the old lord was tottering with age. Marcella fell in love with Ferris the first moment she saw him.
But Ferris, so tall, strong, darkly handsome, and distant, never looked Marcella’s way. She watched him with longing every time they atten
ded the same event. At tournaments, fairs, Saints’ days, even at mass ... but Ferris was far, far away.
Things were not so very different then, although the hatred the Giffords felt for the deFraynes was somewhat fresh still, only thirty years old. But the king had ordered a stop to the fighting between the families and issued a decree that they could meet only in fair competition on tourney fields to bleed out their anger. And so it had been Gifford sons pitted against deFrayne sons then, as it was now. And whenever those two houses met, the crowds were wild with excitement, knowing the rivalry was so deep that each side wished to kill the other. It never failed to be an exciting match.
Sir Ferris, as a young and handsome knight, met deFrayne heirs just as Quentin met Wayland, and he passively accepted Marcella’s tokens and good wishes. Marcella did not understand his reluctance to consider her, she was a young woman of many assets. She was fair-colored and pale, which she thought all men preferred. She was large-boned, tall, not pretty, perhaps, but she would birth many children with ease. And Marcella was very clever for a young daughter of a knight; she could read and cipher, rare talents among girls. She had been reared at Raedelle, although in the home of a knight and not a baron, and she did not set her sights on the eldest, the heir, but on the second-born son. Ferris need not marry nobility, but only marry with wisdom and give the Gifford house many children. Marcella was eager to do this for him. She was as strong and smart as any man and could easily look him square in the eye – she could be his equal if any woman could.
But the young knight had eyes often glittering in the direction of a young, slight woman. Her hair was not golden, but an odd, light brown that was streaked with gold and red. She was tiny and dainty and no doubt would have trouble with childbearing. She appeared frail and was so pampered by her parents, it was doubtful that she had the mettle required to manage a man’s home. Marcella had hated her on sight.
Many saw the way Ferris looked at this dainty one, and rumors started. They were lovers, it was said. The girl, Daphne, was also the daughter of a knight, but a knight of more impressive means than Marcella’s father.