Sweet Bea

by Sarah Hegger

  Chapter 26

  Sir Arthur clenched his jaw and nodded. “So be it; we leave for Anglesea.”

  The joy hit Beatrice in a rush. Her knees collapsed and she leaned into Garrett. Tucked in his arms, she was exactly where she most needed to be.

  “Beatrice,” her mother said. “Let that young man go. We have more to say, you and I.”

  She wasn’t quite ready to do that.

  “You had best come with us.” Roger jerked his head at Garrett. “Make yourself useful.”

  Beatrice tightened her hold on him. She was not going to let her brothers and her father have another go at Garrett.

  “Do not fret, Bea.” William strode over to them. “We will bring him safely back to you. For the most part.”

  “I will go.” Garrett kissed her temple.

  Garrett followed her father out. Beatrice’s heart stuck in her throat.

  * * * *

  Garrett trailed the four men as they crossed a small antechamber and descended to the lower level.

  Sir Arthur stopped suddenly.

  Garrett tensed.

  “Go on, we will join you shortly,” he told his sons.

  Roger stepped forward. “We will stay.”

  Sir Arthur thrust back his shoulders. “Do you imagine I require your protection, whelp?”

  “The bastard is handy with his fists,” Roger replied.

  “I could take him and you, with one hand.”

  “You could try, old man.” Roger grinned. He turned and nudged William to follow him.

  “That boy.” Sir Arthur sighed. “I should kick his ass to teach him a lesson.”

  Garrett waited. His body still ached from the mauling the brothers had given him. He did not want to fight Sir Arthur. For Beatrice, he would try to keep the peace. But the old man was big and in fine form. And Garrett wouldn’t allow himself to be bullied.

  “That day.” Sir Arthur cleared his throat. “At Alethorpe.”

  Old anger simmered in Garrett’s gut.

  “King John wanted Wulfric removed. He was a traitor, consorting with the French, we had proof,” Sir Arthur said.

  “I may be a churl, but I know my history. My sire was more than a traitor. He was a bloody tyrant.”

  “Aye.” Sir Arthur nodded. “I knew that. I could not abide the tales we heard from what was happening in his demesne. I acted out of good conscience.”

  That was too far. “You threw us out with nothing. Was that your lofty conscience?”

  “Jesu.” Sir Arthur’s face flushed. “Settle down and let me speak. This is not easy to say. I believed in John.”

  Garrett made a rude noise. King John. The miserable whoreson.

  “That was before he put aside his wife and married that infant, Isabella, and got her with child.” Sir Arthur seemed to be struggling with words. “It was before we discovered he had starved the wife and children of de Braose to death.”

  “I have no interest in a recitation of King John’s perfidy.”

  “Nay, indeed.” Sir Arthur cleared his throat. “What I am attempting to say is that I am sorry for my actions that day. Toward you and your mother. I discovered later that she had not returned to her father and I made some attempt to find her.”

  “So you said.” Garrett had his doubts as to how much effort Sir Arthur had made.

  “You are a hard one, young Garrett.”

  “Life has shaped me that way.”

  “Verily.” Sir Arthur drew in a deep breath. “I am sorry for what happened to you and Mistress Alyce. I was young and my belly full of fire. I did not consider how my actions would punish the innocent along with the guilty.”

  Garrett rocked back on his heels. Sir Arthur’s words hit him with the weight of an anvil. Had he not said the very same about Beatrice?

  “I know better now.” Sir Arthur clenched his fists. “It does not mean I will not be watching you. I do not like you or trust you.”

  “Old man.” Fire sparked in Garrett’s belly. “If I had the slightest bit of affection for you, that would wound me.”

  “Old man?” Sir Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Try me, bastard?”

  “Another day.”

  “Just say when.” Sir Arthur turned to descend the stairs, the slightest trace of a smile hovering about his mouth.

  * * * *

  The door shut behind Garrett.

  “Now,” said her mother. “You can explain yourself.”

  “I love him.” Beatrice’s cheeks heated. This was the conversation she’d been dreading.

  “We all know that.” Faye rolled her eyes. “I believe mother was talking of your decision to go running off to London.”

  “Oh.” If her face got any hotter, it might burst into flame. “I did what I had to, to save my family.”

  “Sit down, Beatrice.” Nurse lowered her bulk beside Lady Mary. “You will give yourself a neck ache if you keep tossing your chin about like that.”

  Beatrice perched on the edge of the table. She felt a bit foolish with all the women in her family looking at her as if she greatly amused them.

  Tom met her eye and shrugged.

  Ivy gave her a tiny smile of encouragement.

  “You should have come to me,” Lady Mary said.

  “You were ill. I did not want to worry you.” Beatrice kept her eyes on the dirty slippers beneath her hem.

  “I appreciate that, dear, but I am with child, not infirm. A bit of bad news is not going to carry me off.”

  “Henry said you should not be worried with this.”

  Lady Mary snorted. “Is Henry now the expert on childbirth? Henry who cannot look at a woman without blushing.”

  It sounded ridiculous when her mother put it thus. Beatrice risked a peek. “Faye said the same.”

  “I came to my senses.” Faye pursed her lips, smugly.

  Which brought up another unanswered question. “What of Calder?”

  “Faye will remain at Anglesea,” Lady Mary said.

  “Will he not take the boys?”

  Nurse gave a loud bray of laugher. “I would like to see him try.”

  “That point is not debatable.” Lady Mary’s jaw firmed.

  “I cannot return to Calder.” Faye clasped her mother’s hand. Faye’s knuckles turned white. “You do not know what he has become.”

  Sir Gregory stirred behind Faye. How much did the silent Sir Gregory know?

  “Would you tell me?” There were more secrets in the air. It was like fighting through a sticky spider’s web, tendrils of things felt and not seen, sensed and not known.

  “I will tell you, Bea.” Faye gave her a sad smile. “But do you think it could wait until we return to Anglesea?”

  The tension disappeared and Beatrice glowed within. She loved her sister. And her sister loved her. “I think that would be best.” The boys were her immediate concern. “Mayhap Calder will agree to have Simon fostered in our household? Simon will remain his heir.”

  Faye nodded. “It is what we were thinking.”

  “And if he does not agree, will he make war over this?” Beatrice shuddered at the thought of more fighting threatening the men she loved most.

  Faye grinned.

  Again, she was missing something.

  “Tell Beatrice what you told me, Mother.” She winked at Beatrice. “I warn you, it will make you feel somewhat foolish. It did me.”

  Beatrice was growing, unfortunately, accustomed to feeling foolish.

  “How many brothers do I have, Nurse?” Lady Mary asked.

  “You have five brothers, lamb.” Nurse poured hot water into Lady Mary’s cup. She dropped a sack of herbs into it. “And a great favorite you are of all of them.”

  “Aye.” Beatrice was still not clear of where this was heading. “I am well aware of how many uncles I have. But they are wroth with father over this war.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Nurse demanded.

  �
�I can guess,” Tom said.

  Beatrice glared at him. He looked exactly like his mother when he pulled that disapproving face.

  “They may not agree with Arthur,” her mother replied. “But tell us, Nurse. What would my brothers do if, say, someone were to have the sheer idiocy to try to attack a keep I was in? What would happen, Nurse?”

  “Why, lamb,” Nurse chuckled. “Not one of them would stand idly by. They would rush to aid you.”

  A picture formed in Beatrice’s mind. Forget foolish and rush straight to idiotic. She wriggled on her seat.

  “You did not tell me any of this, Beatrice.” Tom rubbed at the back of his neck, which had gone as red as his cheeks.

  “I did not think of it.” And she really, really should have.

  Sir Gregory grunted.

  Faye swung around to glare at him.

  He met her look impassively.

  “Neither did I.” Faye grimaced.

  That eased the sting, marginally.

  “Now, Nurse.” Lady Mary sat back with a smile and folded her arms over her belly. “How many vassals does Sir Arthur have?”

  “Why, lamb, I could not say exactly, but—”

  “Enough, Mother.” Beatrice raised her hand in surrender. “I think I get the point.”

  “Do you now?” Lady Mary gave her a tight smile. “And you can see how foolish the two of you have been. You,” she pointed to Faye, “for not coming to me before the situation with Calder became unbearable. And you,” Beatrice faltered under the icy wave of disapproval, “for hatching some elaborate scheme and going off on some wild chase for naught.”

  “Not entirely.” Beatrice writhed inside. “Someone still had to get to Sir Arthur and Henry was not going to do it.”

  “My husband would never have left me unprotected.” Her mother gaped at her. “Nor any of his children or his property. Do you think he was not aware of how precarious our situation? He does not like my brothers, but he loves us. He made arrangements before he left.”

  It was Beatrice’s turn to gape. Of course, it was all so simple now she understood everything. “I did not know.” She clung to her tattered bit of outrage. “Because nobody ever tells me anything.”

  “I think we have all learned not to keep matters from you.” Faye rolled her eyes.

  “And I have learned never to listen at doorways.” Beatrice was painfully clear on this point. “I never hear anything good.”

  Tom gave a great bark of laughter, which set them all of.

  “We have treated you like a child,” her mother added. “It was not entirely fair of us. But you have always been our Sweet Bea, we never wanted anything to make you sad.”

  Beatrice had to blink away the tears. She had lived sheltered in her family’s love. And reveled there. In truth, she’d made no real effort to be anything other than a happy child. “I have not always been as responsible as I could be.”

  Nurse snorted.

  “I know nothing of your life before.” Ivy’s quiet voice cut through the room. “But you were woman enough to fight those men off me. And you have taken care of Newt and myself and even Tom.”

  “Tom got stabbed.” Beatrice winced at the memory.

  “What!” Nurse whirled in her seat. “Stabbed?”

  “It is all right.” Tom reddened.

  Nurse gripped his tunic as she lumbered to her feet. “Where were you stabbed?”

  “Leave off, Mother.” Tom attempted to wrestle his tunic free.

  Beatrice almost told him not to bother. Nurse had a grip of steel.

  “Across the side and back.” Ivy stepped beside Nurse. “It was a deep cut but I stitched it.”

  Nurse tugged Tom’s shirt over his head. Tom grunted, the sound muffled by the shirt covering his face. When he emerged, he was so red his ears seemed to throb.

  “Lord have mercy.” Nurse clapped her hands to her bosom. “You are gutted like a pike.”

  Tom had the body of a man. They had grown up together and Beatrice had never, not once, noticed how nicely put together he was. He’d always been Tom, her best friend and confidant. She suddenly found herself looking at him as another woman would, a woman such as Ivy.

  Except Ivy was intent on Tom’s wound. “The knife glanced off his ribs.” She indicated along the angry gash. “I soaked the wound in vinegar before I stitched him.”

  “Did you clean all about the wound?” Nurse peered closer.

  “Aye.” Tom grimaced.

  “You are a good girl.” Nurse patted Ivy on the cheek. “There are some wounds that take a bit longer to heal.”

  “And as for the rest. I think that Godfrey is to blame for the biggest part. It was him bending Henry’s ears and feeding Faye’s fear,” Lady Mary said. “When I heard the truth from Henry and Faye, I had this terrible feeling my brother-in-law was in this up to his neck.”

  “I never liked him.” Nurse straightened and folded her arms over her chest. “It is those eyes.” She jabbed two fingers at her eyes. “Do you remember, lamb? When we first came to Anglesea, I said he had those eyes.” Nurse squinted. “Like a fox.”

  “Aye, Nurse.” Lady Mary winked at Beatrice.

  “And I went racing to London, when all I needed to do was come to you.” Beatrice was no fonder of confession now than she had been with Garrett in the wood.

  “Indeed.” Her mother gave her a tight smile. “But then, I think there was more driving your decision than merely your family.”

  Beatrice blushed.

  “Not that I can blame her,” Faye added. “A girl can do worse than arrange a little trip around the back roads with a big strong man.”

  Beatrice choked. This from Faye? Virtuous, perfect, fairest Faye?

  “I am not blind, Beatrice.” Faye pursed her lips. “Your man is comely enough to get under anyone’s skirts.”

  “Do not be vulgar, Faye.” Lady Mary gave Faye a haughty look, then ruined it by laughing.

  Nurse wheezed a chuckle from beside them.

  All the tension rushed out of Beatrice and she laughed.

  Even Ivy smiled and nudged a glowering Tom.

  Behind Faye, Sir Gregory went so red Beatrice thought his face would burst into flame. She threw back her head and laughed harder.

  Epilogue

  It was the perfect day for love. Beatrice lifted her face to enjoy the morning sun on her skin. Already the breeze carried the coming cold. Leaves twirled and dipped in their dance with the wind. An arrow of birds winged their way to warmer climes in the clear arc of blue above. The summer blooms had disappeared. There were not many fine days left before the autumn would draw in.

  This year, however, she looked forward to a long winter confined to the keep with very little to do.

  Such a picture to make a girl burn. Logs roaring in the great hearths, warming where they touched naked skin. A woman lay amongst the furs, her hair spread over the pillows like a wanton. A man lay beside her, his strong hands caressing the limbs gilded by firelight.

  Aye, it would be a good winter. She hoped her father would return before the cold set in.

  Sir Arthur had been called to London to swear fealty to the boy King Henry. Many whispered John’s passing was not entirely natural, but Sir Arthur waved those rumors aside. There was a new king to protect and one barely old enough to be let out of leading strings.

  Sir Arthur predicted more difficult times to come. But here at Anglesea, they had a brief respite.

  Lady Mary had been safely delivered of a boy. There was some sadness as it became clear young Mathew was not as quick as the other children had been. He’d recently passed his first year and the difference between Mathew and the other children of the keep became more marked. Still, he was a loving child and a special favorite of Nurse’s.

  Simon, Faye’s oldest, was much taken with Mathew and hovered over the boy like a guardian angel.

  Tom had been granted his land and was much less to be seen.
<
br />   Beatrice rode over to visit when she could. She missed her friend, but she had Garrett now. And Tom was busy turning his allotment into a farm good enough to support a family.

  And Ivy.

  Nurse had taken to Ivy. Beatrice didn’t know how much Ivy told Nurse, but Nurse treated Ivy as the daughter she’d never had. The two were often found with their heads together over a basket of herbs. As the months passed, Ivy blossomed. The men of the keep swarmed about her, but she showed no interest in any of her suitors. William had tried his best and failed to raise so much as a smile out of Ivy.

  A soft whistle cut the air.

  Beatrice grinned.

  There he stood, by the thicket.

  One shoulder propped against the trunk of a tree, arms folded across his broad chest. The breeze ruffled his dark hair.

  He jerked his head.

  She really must work harder to rid him of that habit.

  “I thought you were at arms training,” she said.

  “I am in training.” He grinned as he tugged her into his arms. He walked her backward.

  Heat unfurled in Beatrice’s middle. She knew that look in his eye. Her spine hit the hard bark of a tree.

  He kept coming until he was pressed fully against her. “I thought of something better to do with my day.” He nipped at her ear before trailing hot kisses down her neck. His good idea pushed at the apex of her thighs.

  She needed the tree for support as her knees melted beneath her. “And what idea was that?”

  “I am rescuing Parsley,” he murmured against her mouth. “He has disgraced himself.”

  Parsley calmly cropped the grass at the edge of the wood. He appeared rather sanguine about his fall from grace.

  It was difficult to care about aught but the wicked play of Garrett’s mouth over hers. “What did he do?” Her mouth opened beneath his, inviting his kiss.

  He toyed with her a moment, letting his mouth hang just a hairbreadth away from hers.

  Beatrice slipped her arms around his neck and tugged him closer.

  “He bit William.” Garrett grinned against her mouth.

  “You should get a proper destrier.”