by Speer, Flora
“Are you mad?” Elaine cried. “We cannot let it go; surely, you realize that. If you didn’t kill her – though why we should believe in your innocence, I cannot imagine – then, someone else did. I intend to discover who it was.”
“If Lady Benedicta did know of the affair,” Cadwallon said, “the knowledge would give her a good reason to kill a beautiful and much younger rival.”
“I – I can’t talk about this any longer,” Lord Bertrand said. Tears stood in his eyes. When he blinked, they began to run down his cheeks. If Elaine hadn’t been so enraged with him, and so horrified at the way he had violated his sacred trust to protect his foster daughter, she almost could have felt sorry for him.
“You cannot avoid talking about it,” Desmond told him with implacable logic. “You will speak with us now, or we will conduct you under guard to Caen, to stand before King Henry and make your explanations to him. If we do take you to Caen, Lady Benedicta must go with us. Once you are at court, both of you will be subjected to insinuations and scandal, which I am sure you would prefer to avoid. The truth may well help you. You say you did not kill Aglise. Tell us what you do know about her death.”
“She was so bright and cheerful,” Lord Bertrand whispered as if he was speaking to himself. “I’ve known little warmth in my life, only fighting and bloodshed, a warrior’s constant hardness and the cool respect of an arranged marriage. I wanted just a little softness, a bit of sweetness and tenderness, before I grew too old to savor what Aglise offered.”
“She should have been like a daughter to you!” Cadwallon exclaimed.
“You didn’t know Aglise,” Lord Bertrand said. He shook his head, despair in every line of his harsh features. “Anyone less like a daughter, you cannot imagine. Always teasing me, always laughing, giggling, so seductive – and so beautiful. So very, very beautiful.”
“It was your duty to resist her lures,” Cadwallon reminded him sternly. “It was your duty to protect her, even against yourself.”
“I know.” Lord Bertrand sighed, a sound that seemed to rise from the depths of his benighted soul. “I did try to resist. For a long time I fought my desire for her. But once we became lovers, I was helpless to stop. I was like a fish caught in a net, that wriggles and wriggles, trying to get free, and all the time it’s being pulled out of the water, slowly and inexorably, sensing it’s doomed, but unable to escape.
“After the first time we made love,” Lord Bertrand continued, “I went to her room whenever I knew she was there alone. I had her in the stables, in a storeroom, on the beach beneath the cliffs. Once, even in the dungeon when she followed me there. She was insatiable, and I was besotted with her. We could not stay away from each other.”
“You are disgusting,” Elaine cried, wishing she could block her ears and hear no more about her sister’s sensual corruption.
“I suppose I am,” he said sadly.
“I cannot be shocked at what you’ve said,” Desmond told him. “I have seen too much of human depravity ever to be shocked again. But, like Elaine, I am disgusted by what you’ve done.”
“After she was dead, I took her necklace,” Lord Bertrand said, gesturing toward the links still twined around Desmond’s fingers, “because I yearned to have a keepsake, a reminder of what I had lost. And I needed a reminder of my sins.”
“What you had lost?” Elaine cried. “Aglise lost her virtue, and her life. Against all that, you lost nothing.”
“Only my heart.”
“You don’t have a heart. If you had, you never would have seduced her. If you truly loved her, you would have considered what was best for her and restrained your vile lust.”
“She seduced me,” Lord Bertrand said. “Though, I admit, I was her willing victim.”
“I will not listen to another word of your pitiful excuses,” Elaine told him. “There can be no excuse for what you’ve done. You are a disgrace to your noble rank. If Aglise, in her youthful foolishness, had no compunctions about lying with you, then you, being older and supposedly wiser, should have sent her away from here rather than ruin her.”
“But,” Lord Bertrand cried, looking desperate, “I did not kill her!”
“Then, who did?” Desmond asked.
Lord Bertrand clamped his lips together and stood silent.
“What, no more words?” Desmond said, looking grim. “After all your passionate excuses, after casting the blame for your misdeeds onto a young woman who can no longer defend herself against slander, suddenly you have nothing more to say? Why, my lord? Can it be that if you tell the truth, you’ll put your own life in jeopardy? The punishment for despoiling and murdering a noble virgin is not a pleasant one.”
“Aglise was no virgin.”
“Liar!” Elaine stepped forward and slapped Lord Bertrand hard across his mouth. “How dare you speak that way about my little sister?”
“You are far too naive, Elaine.” Lord Bertrand’s pale smile sent a chill through her. “You saw what Aglise was doing, and you refused to believe it. She was much like your mother, you know.”
“If only I had a sword,” Elaine declared, “you would not live to draw another breath.”
“All of this talk is procrastination and diversion,” Cadwallon interrupted. “Elaine, you’ve already learned how this man lies every time he opens his mouth. At the moment, he is deliberately lying to upset you, so he can avoid telling us what we want to know. What we will know, one way or another, my lord. Who killed Aglise?”
“I have nothing more to say,” Lord Bertrand told them. “If any of you has a complaint against me, you may take it to King Henry. With his consent, I will defend my honor with my sword.”
“You have no honor,” Elaine declared. “You forfeited all claim to knightly honor the first time you lay with Aglise.”
“I refuse to listen to any more insults here, in my own private chamber,” Lord Bertrand said. Lifting his head, with all sign of humility and loss gone from his face, he looked down his nose at them. “Since the weather is so foul, I will be generous and allow you to remain at Warden’s Manor tonight – but, only tonight. All three of you will leave Jersey on the first boat departing from Gorey Harbor tomorrow. Whether it be your own ship, the Daisy, that comes to retrieve you, or the meanest, leaking fishing vessel, you will go.”
“Your order makes you look guilty,” Desmond said, a faint smile curling his lips.
“I have sworn to you that I am not guilty of murder. Since I am lord here, and my word is law, you will simply have to believe me. Should King Henry wish my presence after he hears your report to him, he may request it, and I will wait upon him in due time. Now, leave me. I do not want to see any of you, or speak to you, again.” With all the lordly arrogance of which he was capable, Lord Bertrand pointed to the door.
“We will indeed leave,” Cadwallon told him with an aristocratic coldness equal to that of any great nobleman, “not because you command it, but because we can no longer bear to look upon your face. Should King Henry decide on a contest of arms to prove your guilt or innocence, I will beg him to allow me to be his champion. Farewell, Bertrand.” Cadwallon turned his back and stalked out of the lord’s chamber.
Elaine was shaking with indignation at the way in which she and her friends had been dismissed. She longed to stay and nag at her foster father until he gave in and revealed the murderer’s name. She was certain he knew who had killed Aglise. And, much like her suspicions of months past, when she had feared she knew the identity of Aglise’s lover while knowing of no proof that would carry any weight, she now feared she knew who the guilty person must be. Yet, once again, she had no proof to back her belief, and thus she dared make no accusation.
Before she could face down Lord Bertrand and ask more questions that might elicit the truth if only he would answer them, Desmond laid his arm across her shoulders and drew her out of the room onto the landing at the top of the stairs. The latch of the heavy door clicked shut behind them.
With Desmond’s
arm still around her, Elaine started down the steps. She was so distraught that she wasn’t paying attention to where she went and the gloom prevented her from seeing clearly.
At the next landing below the lord’s chamber she stumbled and would have fallen if not for Desmond’s support. He caught her, pulling her back onto the landing and into his embrace, with both of his arms holding her securely. A moment later, besieged by sudden weakness, Elaine found herself clinging to him as if her very life depended on his reliable strength.
The sound of Cadwallon’s footsteps faded away as he continued down the curving staircase to the entry hall. Two doors opened off the landing where they stood, but both doors were closed and no one else was present on the steps. In a busy manor filled with people, they were alone, granted a rare moment of privacy.
Elaine felt Desmond’s lips brushing against her forehead. The strong circle of his arms offered safety and respite from deadly concerns. Trembling a little, she lifted her face. Her lips parted. Then his mouth covered hers as he crushed her to him, thigh to thigh, manly chest to softly rounded bosom.
Save for the occasional, formal and expected salute on her cheek from male relatives, no man had ever kissed her. Often she had wondered what it was like to be held in a tender embrace. Knowing she was the plain sister and, thus, it wasn’t likely anyone would desire her with great passion while Aglise was around, Elaine had always assumed she would, in due time, be married for her dowry, after which she would live in the polite coolness that characterized most noble marriages. Never had it occurred to her that a man might want to kiss her as Desmond was doing, with gentleness and sweetness, deepening as the moments passed into a not-so-gentle, yet still incredibly sweet plundering of her mouth.
Slowly his lips caressed hers, his tongue pushing against her with warm insistence. With a little cry of surprise, she opened her mouth and he plunged deep, tasting her in a startling invasion.
All thought of safety in Desmond’s arms fled, to be replaced by a sense of heart-stopping danger and a longing she couldn’t define. She didn’t care whether she ought to be kissing him or not; she only knew she ached for more of what he was doing to her. She spared one brief thought for Aglise, wondering if the heated need she was presently experiencing was the same emotion that had ensnared and doomed her sister. Then she stopped thinking and gave herself up to the wonder of newly awakened desire, glorying in the experience.
She hadn’t known, hadn’t dared to dream, that a man’s mouth could wreck such havoc on her senses, awakening each of them to intense awareness. Desmond smelled of clean, rosemary-scented soap, and he tasted of the almond custard he’d eaten at the end of the funeral feast. He was warm and strong, and he held her as if she was a treasure he would never willingly release.
Yet he did release her, and all too soon for Elaine’s liking. The tender pressure of his arms slackened and he slowly drew away from her. Elaine’s knees were unsteady, so with one hand she clutched at his arm, but Desmond shook his head and pried her fingers loose.
“Please,” she whispered, “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. I have no right to take such unfair advantage of you while you are grieving and frightened. It was dishonorable of me. I apologize.”
“I didn’t mind.”
“You are too innocent to appreciate what a knave I am,” he muttered.
He flung away from her and for one terrifying instant Elaine feared he intended to throw himself off the stairs to the stone entry hall below. It would be easy enough to do; there was no guard rail on the stairs and they were steep and narrow. Elaine, who did not care for heights, always ascended that stairway by staying close to the stone wall while resting one hand on the wall for balance. Her stomach clenched at the thought of Desmond tumbling to his death.
She should not have worried, for he turned back to her almost at once. His face was calm, his feet were firmly planted on the landing, and she could see no trace of emotion in him. How amazing that she could still be quaking with newly awakened desires she didn’t understand, her insides fluttering and her heart racing, while Desmond was so controlled.
“Truly,” she said, “I did not mind what you did. I’m not offended.”
She stopped short of telling him she wouldn’t mind if he kissed her again. Elaine carried in her heart and soul a full measure of a Norman noblewoman’s pride. True to her rank, love was something she had never quite believed in and had always known better than to expect. In her world, love was a foolish emotion that drove serving girls to commit rash acts. It was also the uncontrolled emotion that had led her mother to make a second marriage which Elaine feared would eventually prove disastrous. Having guessed well before Aglise’s disappearance that she had probably taken a lover, and having just learned how perilous the affair had been to her sister’s well-being, Elaine was inclined to be extremely cautious where her own emotions were concerned. Still, the heated yearning in the very center of her being did not diminish.
“Let us join Cadwallon in the hall,” she suggested, not looking directly at Desmond. “The three of us need to decide what we are going to do next.”
“I’ll go down ahead of you, in case you trip again,” Desmond offered.
Without waiting for her agreement, he moved past her. He’d never admit it, but he was deeply shaken by what had just happened. To his chagrin, he was aching with desire for the intelligent, straightforward young woman who followed him, her footsteps echoing his own.
Desmond respected intelligence and was always delighted on those occasions when he encountered it in a woman. His admiration of Elaine’s honest character and devotion to her sister had been growing since their first meeting. Her allure was strong yet subtle, not depending on luxurious gowns and jewels, or on a painted face and flirtatious manner. Elaine was remarkably different from her mother and from the other ladies of the royal court, and it was exactly her difference that so intrigued him. He honored her, respected her – and he castigated himself severely for longing to do to Elaine what Lord Bertrand had done to her sister. Every male instinct he possessed urged him to drag her back to one of those empty, silent guest rooms on the upper landing, to toss her onto the bed he knew he’d find inside, and seize what he wanted before he died of thwarted desire.
Such an act would make him no better than Lord Bertrand, would, in fact, make him far worse. He had even less to offer Elaine than Bertrand could have intended to give Aglise. Desmond owned nothing but his armor, his sword, his horse, a few articles of clothing, and a small sum of coins earned by spying, which he had left in Royce’s care. He hadn’t ever before needed to think about the future, hadn’t, in fact, believed he would have one. Spying was dangerous work, after all, and it was the danger he loved.
How low he had fallen, to prey upon an innocent, decent young woman whose emotions were raw with anger and grief and – yes, it must be considered, for Elaine was far from stupid – with fear for her own life once she learned the identity of her sister’s killer. Fear, as Desmond knew well, had a way of heightening sexual desire.
He reached the bottom of the steps and the entry hall. Without looking at Elaine he set his mouth into what he knew was a grim line and headed through the arch into the great hall. For all the wisdom of his years of experience, and despite his own arguments against longing for her, he was intensely aware of Elaine’s soft footsteps as she followed him.
Chapter 10
In the great hall the high table had been cleared of food, dishes, and of the white linen cloth, leaving only the polished wood boards of the table itself. Cadwallon was sitting on a bench at one end of the table. A platter of bread and cheese lay before him and Ewan was filling three wine cups from a large pitcher.
“Join me,” Cadwallon said, beckoning to Elaine. “We’ve much to do before we leave Jersey tomorrow, and if we are wise, we will devise a plan.”
Elaine stepped onto the dais and sat beside Cadwallon. She was careful to sit so there was no room left on the ben
ch for Desmond. She would have preferred to sit close to him, with his arm around her, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to think clearly if he was so near. Desmond seemed to understand. He pulled a stool over, placing it far enough from her so they weren’t touching, yet near enough that they could talk quietly.
“Ewan, my lad,” Cadwallon said to his squire, “stay close behind me and look as if you are engrossed in attending us. You are to be included in what we do, so you’ve a right to offer your opinion. We’ll welcome it, in fact.
“First,” Cadwallon went on, “Elaine and Desmond, I want both of you to eat some bread and cheese. I watched you during the midday meal and neither of you swallowed more than a bite or two. It’s not good enough, my friends; you will need your strength during the next few days, and everyone knows how a lack of solid food makes a man weak. I’m sure it’s the same for women. You may be certain whatever Ewan serves us is untainted.”
Cadwallon paused to tear a piece of bread from the loaf and to cut a wedge of cheese. He popped both into his mouth and chewed. His gaze rested on Elaine as if to enforce his advice, until she helped herself to bread and a little cheese, and sipped a bit of the wine Ewan had poured for her.
“Now,” Cadwallon said when Desmond also began to eat, “after our interview with Lord Bertrand, I think we all know who must have killed Aglise. Since coming to Warden’s Manor, we’ve learned of no one who disliked her enough to want her dead. With one exception. Desmond, you and I have several times discussed the motive a betrayed wife may have to wish her husband’s mistress dead.”
“I have come to the same conclusion,” Elaine said. “I cannot believe Lady Benedicta didn’t know about her husband and Aglise. She is aware of almost everything that happens within the manor walls. Furthermore, she knows enough about herbs to concoct a potion that will kill, and she has full access to any herbs that are here. She alone holds the key to the locked cabinet in the stillroom where the poppy syrup is kept. She has always insisted that particular precaution was for the safety of any foolish children who might try to taste the syrup and thus injure themselves, and also to prevent any malicious souls from stealing and misusing a preparation that can be deadly. Malicious souls, indeed.” She halted on a choked sob, wishing she hadn’t eaten the cheese. It lodged in her throat until she gulped some wine to ease it into her stomach, where she prayed both cheese and wine would remain.