by Tamara Leigh
El startled when Rollo’s hand touched her shoulder. “Do not listen, milady. That ‘un be bitter.”
His protective gesture causing her throat to constrict, El said tightly, “As told, I am no longer in need of an audience, nor will I be dissuaded from what I know to be true.” She turned and started toward Horace in the doorway.
“Elianor!”
El paused, peered over her shoulder.
Emotions—uncertainty, frustration, fear—etched Constance’s countenance, but when she sighed, her face returned to its beautiful planes.
“You stand in the presence of a woman whose years pass with excruciating leisure, leaving her in no doubt God does not look kindly upon her.” She blinked against tears. “No matter how often she falls to her knees, no matter how long she clasps her hands, no matter how hard she beats her fists against her brow, He is silent.”
El longed to ignore the tug upon her heart, but she was too intimate with the silence of the Lord to not feel for her aunt. She turned back.
“Thus,” Constance continued, “this woman is so desperate she would use her niece to gain what has long been refused her.”
The admission set El back on her heels. “Use me? For revenge?”
“Forgiveness.” Constance gave a brief, sorrowful smile. “Bayard will not pardon me. Is that not right, Rollo?”
El glanced at him, but a scowl was his only answer.
Constance gestured to the chairs angled close to one another. “Pray, sit.”
El’s curiosity was up, but no more than wariness. She did—and did not—wish to be here.
“Methinks we ought to go, milady,” Rollo rasped.
Constance took a step forward. “I beseech you, Elianor, stay.”
El let her feet carry her forward, and though Rollo’s grumblings followed her, he did not. As she and her aunt settled in the chairs, the big man positioned himself to the right of the door.
A glance at Horace confirming Magnus’s man was more at ease with his rival distant from the one under his protection, El returned her attention to her aunt.
Constance stared at the glowing coals, hands restless in her lap as she squeezed one, then the other. At last, she met El’s gaze. “You are right about Bayard. Never did he abuse me—no matter how I angered him.”
The only relief El felt was in hearing the truth affirmed. “Why allow that ill to be believed of him? Do you hate him that much?”
“Hate him?” Her laughter was clipped. “Certes, I wanted to hate him for stealing me from the man I love. But that is no easy thing, as you have learned. Indeed, had I not given my heart to Serle, I could have loved Bayard.” She sighed. “And it would have been me in his bed last eve.”
Jealousy once more jabbed El, loosing words she should not speak. “Instead, you cuckolded him.”
Constance’s startle seemingly genuine—as if she only then realized to whom she spoke intimately of the man who no longer belonged to her—El silently vowed she would conquer her jealousy.
“Forgive me,” Constance said, “such words I should not speak. But neither should you judge me. Though you may know the stirrings of love, you cannot comprehend what it is to feel so deeply for another that all of you brims over, making their absence a physical pain that claws at your emptiness—one you would do anything to relieve.”
It was true. El did not love Bayard to that extent, but she did not envy her aunt. Though she believed her capacity for love would grow, she would not have it be so boundless it caused her to break marriage vows and men to lose eyes and arms.
Constance sat forward and gripped El’s hand. “Heed my advice. Be not quick to gift your love. Better yet, do not gift it at all. Once you cast it before you, once it is returned and allowed to blossom, your life is no longer your own.”
“Is that not as it is ordained,” El said, “that two become one?”
Once again, her aunt startled as if returned from an unseen place. “In that you are right, for you have the luxury of marriage to one for whom you feel. As did I—until Bayard.” She curled her nails into El’s palm. “Did he not covet and take what belonged to another? Did I not warn him I would never feel for him what I felt for Serle?” She nodded. “Bayard is as much—if not more—at fault for my faithlessness. Indeed, one might say he asked to be made a cuckold.”
A growl reminded El they were not alone, and she glanced at Rollo from whom the disgruntled sound issued, then Horace.
Acknowledging there was some truth in what Constance said, El felt almost sick with sorrow for the lives ruined by the hurts Bayard and her aunt had inflicted upon each other.
Constance released El and sat back in her chair. “If I could change what happened that day, I would.”
“You would be faithful to Bayard?”
She shook her head. “Too late for that.”
“I do not understand.”
“That day was not the first that I was intimate with Serle. It was the last, and ruined by the wrath and blood in which it was steeped. Woe that I did not do as Agatha instructed.”
This time El was moved by surprise, as much for the revelation Constance had previously cuckolded Bayard as tidings that her maid had contributed to those terrible events. “What had Agatha to do with that day? Did not Bayard oust her two months earlier?”
“He did, but she loved me too much to abandon me.”
Had Agatha not twice struck El, the last time with murderous intent, still El would not have believed the maid’s devotion had anything to do with love. It was something self-serving, even if only to feed a twist in the woman’s soul.
“You are saying she stayed?” El asked. “Hid herself within Adderstone’s walls?”
“Nay, that would have been dangerous. Instead, she continued to use the underground—”
“Continued to?”
“Aye, though only as a means of carrying Serle’s messages to me and mine to him.”
“And before that?” El pressed.
“Ere Bayard tossed her out, she arranged for Serle and me to meet there every other month,” she said, then hastened to add, “only that we might be near each other—to talk.”
Again, El’s stomach protested. Not only had Agatha stolen powders into Bayard’s drink to prevent him from being intimate with his wife, but she had aided in replacing that lost intimacy with intimacy outside of marriage—even if only by way of brief meetings and words on parchment that kept Constance and Serle’s yearn for each other alive.
“You said Agatha gave you instructions that day, meaning ’twas she who arranged it.”
Constance nodded. “Has ever a servant been more devoted to her mistress?”
Who, exactly, was Agatha? And why was she so eager to tug and jerk and sever the strings of others’ lives? Unfortunately, as enamored as Constance was with the woman’s friendship, it was not a question she was capable of answering.
“When Serle came for you that day,” El said, “what were Agatha’s instructions?”
“I was to flee with him as soon as Bayard departed for London, and I meant to. But there my beloved was in my bedchamber, and there my husband was not. Though we did not intend it to happen, we had not been intimate since before I wed, and so…” Constance momentarily closed her eyes. “Bayard, who was to have been gone a fortnight, returned and found another man in our bed.”
Though reason had told El it would be a terrible blow for a man to learn he had been cuckolded—worse, to witness it—only now that she was wed to Bayard was she able to sympathize. The mere thought of happening upon him with another woman pierced her. And she was glad of it, for she had been grateful to the women servants who had tempted Murdoch to stray. The reprieves had been short-lived, but priceless.
“Tell me, how did Agatha learn of the underground passage?” El said. “And who provided her with keys?”
Constance shrugged. “I know only that she did not gain the knowledge, nor the means, from me. Nor did I care how she came by it.” She narrowed her l
ids. “If you are also asking if I freed her from Bayard’s prison, I did not, though had it been possible, I would have.”
El stiffened. “Surely you know she pushed me down the steps, that it was a broken neck she wished upon me?”
With an air of patience, Constance said, “In all my years with her, never did she show herself capable of such ill. Nay, Elianor, methinks you have interpreted what was an accident as being of foul intent, influenced as you are by Bayard’s hatred of one who put my needs ahead of others’.”
El sat forward. “There is naught to interpret, Constance. Agatha struck me down, and ere I lost consciousness, I heard her tell whoever was with her that a broken neck was a good end to a Verdun.”
Uncertainty crept up Constance’s features, but she shook her head. “I am not saying you lie, only that you are mistaken. ’Tis true Agatha is a difficult woman, but I know her best, and I know her to be good.”
Never before had El so longed to shake sense into someone. “It was not the first time she struck me unconscious.”
Constance expelled an air of disgust. “Cease, Elianor!”
“Does a good woman pave the path toward infidelity? Does she drug a husband to keep him from his wife’s bed?”
Constance thrust forward in her chair, jutted an anger-dimpled chin. “You would condemn her for that? You who benefitted from the absence of your first husband’s attentions when he was at his worst?”
El blinked. During her one-sided conversations with Constance, she had tried to offer comfort by letting her aunt know she was not alone in suffering a husband’s cruelty, but no details had El given of her own abuse, nor had she told of the relief provided by the powders slipped into Murdoch’s drink.
“Agatha visits you at the abbey,” El said.
As if suddenly fatigued, Constance sank back in her chair. “Only thrice has she come to me, but she told of the aid she gave you when Magnus sent her to you. Thus, dare not look ill upon her for keeping Bayard from my bed unless you look ill upon yourself for accepting her aid in keeping Murdoch from yours.”
Once more, El longed to shake her. “Perhaps I should not have taken the relief she offered, but my circumstances were different from yours. I was abused, and never did I—nor would I have—asked for her aid in cuckolding my husband.”
Constance flicked a hand as if to sweep aside the words, confirming she was not open to reason where Agatha was concerned.
Grudgingly determined to leave the matter be, El asked what had yet to be answered. “Earlier, you said you would have used me had I allowed it. How?”
Her aunt eyed her, and El wondered if a lie—or delusion—might next spring from her. “When I convinced Magnus to bring me into Adderstone, it was so I might speak with Bayard as he has denied me all these years.”
Surprised, though she probably should not be, that Constance wished an audience with him, El said, “For what would you speak with him?”
“As told, I wish his forgiveness. But though I thought he would seek me out—he did so love me once—he has not come. But after he found you in the inner walls, and I saw the way he was with you, and yesterday, when I saw how you were with him while you wept…” Constance trailed off.
El had glimpsed her aunt in the doorway the night Bayard had delivered out of the inner walls, but had been unaware of her presence when she had poured out her grief over her first husband while her second husband held her.
“There seemed another way to reach Bayard,” her aunt continued, “that through you, I might gain forgiveness.”
“Me?”
“Aye, before I knew you were so enamored of him that you would reject what you have held to be true about my marriage to The Boursier.”
Though suspicion crept over El, all the more sure-footed for her having earlier considered her aunt had willfully allowed Bayard to be falsely accused, she was not ready to set her imaginings adrift on that current.
Once more leaning toward her, Constance said, “I thought to bargain with him—to ease whatever misgivings you have about his character by revealing the true cause of the injuries I sustained that day.”
There it was. Though El had not allowed herself to be fletched and fit to the bow aimed at Bayard, it made her feel dirty. “All these years,” she whispered, “you held hostage the truth behind your vow of silence.”
Constance snatched her niece’s wrist and pulled her from the chair and onto her knees before her. “If you had one narrow hope of happiness,” she hissed, her sour breath a poor fit for her loveliness, “only one chance to fix what impatience and carelessness had broken, would you yield it up to the man whose covetousness began it all?”
The hypocrite in El longed to proclaim she would not compromise her morals, but it slunk away with the reminder she had done just that in attempting to see Bayard divested of Godsmere. And her resentment over being carelessly handled also stole away when her aunt’s anger turned to grief, as evidenced by a flood of tears.
El sighed. “As you say, I have never loved as you have, Aunt Constance,” she once more acknowledged their kinship, “so I cannot know the lengths to which I would go to preserve such a love. I only hope I would do what is right and good, even at the loss of my heart.”
Shoulders easing, Constance released El. “I know what I sought to do is not in God’s will, but what is one more wrong in a world brimming with wrongs?”
As El did not believe she wished an answer, she held her tongue, but her aunt pressed, “Tell me. What is one more wrong?”
El gently squeezed the woman’s arm. “To one person, it can be everything, just as Bayard’s one wrong in taking you to wife was everything to you.”
Constance’s gaze shuddered, and she groaned, “So many wrongs, Elianor. That day, I called him Serle while we—” She shook her head. “I felt so terrible that I could not stop crying, and he was so angry he departed Adderstone hours earlier than planned.” Her breath caught. “And returned far earlier than expected. Do you know what he said—rather, shouted—when he found us abed?”
Refusing to allow her mind to tug toward imaginings of anyone other than Bayard and herself there, El held her aunt’s gaze.
“That he had resolved to find a means of releasing me from our miserable marriage, and for that he had turned back—to tell me. It may have been a lie, it may have been the truth.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “But it no longer mattered.”
Silence descended, and as El waited for it to lift, she glanced across her shoulder at Rollo. He listened, as did Horace where he stood just outside the door, but as if aware they witnessed something intensely private, both men studied the lay of the floor.
El returned her attention to Constance, but it was some minutes before her aunt raised her moist lashes. “Ere the shedding of blood, all was forfeit. So you see, Elianor, I had naught to lose by returning to Adderstone.” She raised her eyebrows. “And everything to gain.”
Those last words were not benign, as told by her aunt’s tone.
El understood. “Tell me,” she said, “had Bayard accepted your offer to reveal to me he was never abusive, what besides forgiveness would you have asked of him in return?”
A smile moved Constance’s lips. “Love.”
El drew back.
Her aunt gave a sharp laugh. “Not Bayard’s love. Serle’s love, for therein lies true forgiveness—your husband granting me the happiness he, himself, stands to enjoy if all is well between you and him.”
“But how—?”
“At last, she speaks,” growled the one of whom they spoke.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
For this, Bayard had not come abovestairs after hours in the saddle that had seen him and his men traversing new-fallen snow as they rode village to village.
It was for Elianor he had mounted the stairs. Imagining her yet abed, thinking to shed his damp garments and curve his body around hers in place of the great hall’s warming fire, he had faltered at the sight of her uncle traversing the corridor
ahead of him toward the man-at-arms who beckoned from outside Constance’s chamber.
A sense of something ill had made Bayard eschew the solar, and as he overtook Verdun, he had caught the sound of Elianor’s voice and recognized another voice despite its scratch and rasp.
From the doorway, he had seen Elianor at that woman’s feet. Elianor’s comforting hand upon Constance’s arm. Elianor who had proclaimed she alone had determined the truth about her new husband. And yet, in his absence, she sought confirmation of that truth despite her claim he was so fully in possession of her trust she need not hear his side of the tale.
He shifted his gaze from the wide eyes she had turned upon him, to Constance who sat with her back to him on the edge of her chair—utterly still, as if she were prey, fearful the slightest movement might cause him to pounce.
Trying to calm his roiling—to control himself as Father Crispin would have him do—Bayard drew a long breath, then turned to her brother whose brow was weighted with questions his silent sister had allowed his imagination to answer all these years. “It seems you guessed wrong, Verdun,” he said and entered the chamber.
“Milord,” Rollo said, having come to attention the moment his liege appeared in the doorway.
Bayard glanced at him. “You may leave us.”
The big man leaned near, in a loud whisper, said, “Would that I had not delivered the message, milord,” and turned away.
Though tempted to demand Rollo give substance to his words, Bayard pushed his mantle back off his shoulders and continued forward. Behind, he heard Verdun dismiss his own man-at-arms, then the crush of rushes beneath the man’s booted feet.
Halting near the chairs that faced the brazier, Bayard answered the pull of Elianor’s gaze. “In answer to your question, Wife,” he said, “allow me to share with you and your uncle the terms of forgiveness repeatedly offered by the woman I first took to wife.”
He jutted his chin at Constance. “Every year, she sends a missive in which she promises to forgive me and restore my good name by revealing the truth of all she suffered at my hands.”