by Darci Hannah
He took my balled fists in his hands, warm, large, and heavily calloused, and then gave me a look of heart-stopping sweetness. “And I knew you too, but not only from my dreams. Julius and I served Lord Hume together. You don’t remember, but I have met you, many times in fact. I was lucky enough to visit Blythe Hall with Julius on a few occasions. I even accompanied him to Haddington—perhaps a dozen or so times. You were young,” he said, pretending it didn’t matter, although we both were acutely aware that it did. “You were much too busy to take notice of me, but I noticed you. And Julius alone understood my attraction to his beautiful, young, high-spirited, and charmingly naïve little sister.”
“Gabriel St. Clair!” I cried, squeezing his hands tightly—smiling, remembering. It hit me with the force of a driving wind, sweeping through me, filling me with memories and visions of the young man he had once been. Tall, lean to the point of thinness, broad-shouldered, and incredibly well mannered, Gabriel St. Clair had been my brother’s silent shadow. He was a companion so loyal that he seldom left Julius’s side. He had also been terribly shy, as I recalled, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember if we had ever exchanged more than a few words. And, in my defense, he had changed a great deal. His face had been sharper, his body leaner, and his hair had been more of an umber shade rather than the golden color of winter wheat it now was; but his smile and his eyes were definitely the same.
“Gabriel,” I said, filling with ineffable joy and squeezing his hands even tighter. “Why did you never speak of this to me? You believe you never made an impression on me, but you couldn’t have been further from the truth. I have always liked you! And as a woman I have dreamed of you.” These last words were spoken softly, caressed with the sacredness they deserved. “I’ve had visions of you so exquisite that I was left in tears. That was the reason I believed you to be an angel. It was too perfect. My image of you was too perfect. And the joy of it is that you are not perfect, Gabriel. You’re a real man: a knight. Julius may have toyed with us, but why excoriate him for it? We have been given a rare gift. Why shouldn’t we be together? Where is the sin in wanting that?”
“There is no sin in that, Isabeau, my heart,” he said, his eyes wide and liquid as mine. He pulled me into his embrace and, holding me tightly, uttered, “And there is no sin in believing in angels either. Forgive me for mocking you; forgive me for putting you through all this. Listen to me,” he demanded softly, seeing that I was very near tears. The effects of the lake were wearing off. I was desperately tired and hadn’t seen a proper bed in a long while. I dearly wished to know what was going on but feared that once I did I would not have the strength to accept it. I gave him my full attention regardless, because he deserved at least that much. “Listen to me,” he said again, this time in a harsh and sorrowful whisper. “Listen and I will tell you everything your brother has left out.”
The man holding me, whom I had honestly mistaken for an angel, was indeed a warrior of God. He was a warrior-knight, to be more specific, and one who served the noble and holy order of Saint John of Jerusalem, in Rhodes, a strict monastic fighting order. It also meant, in short, that he lived as a monk.
“You are a Hospitaller?!” I uttered, using the common name the order went by. I sat up, pulling away from his embrace as my hands covered my open mouth. “Dear heavens preserve us!” I breathed, stupefied; for the shock of his identity could not have been greater, nor the knowledge that I had defiled—quite soundly and thoroughly as I recalled—a member of the holy brethren. I looked at his surcoat, at the symmetrical white, eight-pointed cross over the left breast—eight points symbolizing the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: the four arms of the cross representing the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Wanting to believe him my guardian angel, I had failed to comprehend that small detail. “It all makes sense now,” I said, thinking of his odd behavior. “It makes sense … dear God! It makes no sense at all!” I concluded with a frown.
“Please, don’t look at me like that, Isabeau.”
“But I feel perfectly wretched about this too, if it’s any consolation. I swear,” I said, looking him bravely in the eye, “had I any idea of the level of your commitment to God, I would not have pressed you so hard.” I raked my hands through my tangled wet hair, remembering. “I was shameless!” I said, horrified, and then hugged myself as vivid details of our night together flashed before my eyes. “Perfectly shameless! Dear God, I was no better than a twopenny wanton!” I was coming utterly unraveled. “And for once in my life I have actually succeeded in surpassing the deprecatory heights of Marion Boyd! It’s a feat I thought impossible, but I did it! At least Marion goes after morally unfettered men—and kings! The man I seduce, body and soul, is shackled to God … Oh God, what have I done?” I whimpered, and then, frustration hitting me like an arrow through the heart, I cried to the heavens: “Why must life be so wretchedly unfair?!”
Throughout my tirade Gabriel had remained perfectly still as he watched me. Then, unable to take any more, he closed his eyes. His pain was truly my pain, and it was the last and most devastating deception my brother had foisted on me yet—correction: had foisted on us. I now understood what Gabriel had been trying so hard to tell me. “Please, please, forgive me,” I uttered at last, looking upon his angelic face. I grabbed the sleeves of his jupon. He opened his eyes, and I saw how bloodshot and wet they were. We were both beyond consolation. “Please forgive me, Gabriel.”
“By God, there’s nothing to forgive!” he uttered harshly, almost defensively, as unshed tears continued to pool in his eyes. “Don’t you understand that I wanted this too—that I’ve always wanted this?” His voice was thick with emotion, and I watched, heartbroken, as the first tear slipped from his swollen eyes.
Men like Gabriel never cried.
“I do know that,” I whispered sincerely, and took him in my arms, knowing that I was the source of his sorrows, knowing that I was the cause of his tears. They continued to fall, and as I wiped them away with trembling fingers I asked, “But why, Gabriel, if you have always wanted this did you become a Hospitaller? Why not just find me, and tell me how you felt before leaving Scotland? I would have taken you out of hand, had you done so.”
This made him smile, genuinely, and it lifted my heart to see it. But then, as quickly as it came, the smile faded. “I couldn’t come to you,” he said, his eyes moist, his face serious. “It would have been impossible, and Julius knew it. And the reason is because unlike your brother, I didn’t have the luxury of a legitimate pedigree. I may have the surname of St. Clair, but only because my mother insisted. She was a young Norwegian woman who was brought to serve the house of Lord William St. Clair when his Norwegian holdings in Orkney and the Shetlands were taken from him and ceded to the crown. That was when James III married Princess Margaret of Denmark, you’ll recall. The gift of the Orkneys and the Shetlands were part of her dowry. Sir William, as hereditary earl of the Orkneys, had always paid homage to the Norwegian kings as well as his Scottish sovereign. My mother was the daughter of a minor Norwegian nobleman, and when Sir William lost his earldom—a bitter pill for him to swallow—she was what one might term a consolation prize.
“My father was old,” he continued, “well into his late fifties when I was born. My mother was very young. But I know he valued her greatly. He could never acknowledge me, being married to Lady Janet at the time, but he did allow me his name. My mother insisted on it. However, I don’t remember her very well. She died in childbirth when I was three, and I was sent from the big house in Blackfriars’ Wynd to live at Rosslyn. Sir William was kind to me, gave me a fine education, and shortly before he died, put me in the service of Lord Hume. That was where I met Julius, and I must tell you what a perfect friend for a lost, lonely boy he was. I loved him like a brother. I worshipped the ground he walked on until about five years ago, when we had a falling-out. I told him my intentions of becoming a Hospitaller then. And he mocked me for it as I have never been m
ocked before. I took my vows shortly thereafter and have never broken them … until last night.”
I could feel my cheeks grow hot under his gaze. “I’m sorry,” was all I could think to say.
“I’m not,” he said. He was breathing easier now, and there was a wild elation in his eyes as he looked at me. “Truthfully, I’m not at all.” And then, just as the words left his mouth, his head shot up, and he looked suspiciously around. Cautioning me to be quiet, he stood.
It was then that we heard the baying of a hound. It was far off yet, but its effect was immediate. Bodrum’s head lifted in alarm at nearly the same time Gabriel reached for me. “Quick, it may be nothing, but we need to move. Perhaps I forgot to tell you yesterday,” he said, bending to pick up the bedroll, “but just after some cowardly bastard shot your brother in the back, Sir George broke down the gates of Blythe Hall, intent on capturing you. And I’m laying odds that the man who broke down the gates was the same man who shot your brother.”
“Sir George!” The name filled me with a sudden terror and shattered our private moment.
With the swiftness of long-ingrained military precision, Gabriel broke camp. After securing our meager belongings to Bodrum, he swung effortlessly into the saddle, then reached down for me. “I’m pulling you up behind me. I don’t trust myself the other way,” he said, and gave a wry smile. Seated behind him I tentatively held to his waist, feeling at once awkward and shy. Giving Bodrum a nudge, he grabbed my hands with his and held them tightly. “I may be a monk, Isabeau,” he said as we started down the hill, “but I’m a man first, and it is with a man’s heart and soul that I love you. Never forget that. I made the mistake of losing my head last night, and God forgive me, if pressed I’ll likely do it again. I’m now yours to do with as you will. I’m eternally damned. Perhaps I’ve been from the start, but now I have you. And as long as I live and breathe, I will let no other man touch you again.”
Chapter 17
A KNIGHT DETAINED
SIR ALEXANDER, THE SECOND LORD HUME, HAVING JUST received that title from his deceased grandfather, was in his mid-forties, trim, ambitious, and still covered with dust from the road he had recently traveled. He was tired, and fractious, and wanted nothing more than to see his bed, yet duty required him to sit at his desk and attempt to scribble out a cogent report of the troubling incident at Blythe Hall. He had come at the tail end of the fracas, bidden by a messenger of Lord Kilwylie’s who claimed that Julius Blythe, setting his brazen foot on Scottish soil, had kidnapped King James and had him imprisoned in Blythe’s ancestral home. Kilwylie’s man also had claimed that Blythe was holding his sister, the lovely Mistress Isabeau, captive, along with Kilwylie’s own cousin, the fetching Mistress Marion Boyd—both young women, according to Kilwylie, having recently left the king’s court. Isabeau and Marion were friends of his wife, and he thought he should have known if they had left court. It was a wild, audacious claim, and only a fraction of it had been substantiated.
In truth, he had never heard so much as a rumor that Julius Blythe was back in Scotland. It was something he should have known if it were true. Yet not one man in his diverse network of spies had ever mentioned a word on the subject. Also, the claim that young Jamie Stewart, the King of Scotland, had been abducted was just ludicrous. He, Alexander, was Keeper of Stirling Castle and guardian of the king’s younger brothers. He knew their movements. James could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be in the Borders! And yet there was a compelling reason to want to believe Kilwylie; and it was his duty, as Warden of the East Marches, to look into such claims, wild or sobering.
As fate would have it, he had just returned to Hume Castle after an interesting few days chasing reivers all the way to Carlisle. Ironically, his recent movements were in response to a matter concerning the stolen Blythemuir livestock. However, twenty-five miles into the chase they realized they had been following a reiving band of Armstrongs, and not, apparently, the men who had taken the Blythemuir sheep. They knew this because the Armstrong rogues had amassed a sizable herd of English cattle, which they had cleverly hidden in Eskdale, hoping to wait out the legal duration of the Trodd. Their hopes, however, had been dashed, and the Armstrong rogues were now locked up in Carlisle awaiting trial. Sir Alexander and his men had returned home, still no closer to the mystery of the missing Blythemuir sheep. And they had barely polished the dust off their boots when Kilwylie’s man came with the summons. He remembered how grateful he was that his army was only required to travel as far as his neighbor’s castle. How naïve he had been this morning. For given all that the messenger claimed, Sir Alexander still had not been prepared to see the face of Julius Blythe. It was a shock—a surprising shock that was linked to a web of deeply buried and thoroughly suppressed emotions. They had all, of course, resurfaced in that first instant.
As Lord Hume scribbled his report, his messenger sat patiently beside him nursing a mug of ale. Alexander paused, thought on a word, stuck the quill into the ink pot, and then scratched some more—until he heard the first echoing chord. The quill stopped. The men looked at each other.
The sound, pure in its sweetness, thin and light as a nightdress of the finest gossamer, tickled the tunnels under the Great Hall and wafted up through the chimney. “That sounds like a lute,” remarked the messenger prosaically. “Where’s it comin’ from, d’ye suppose?”
Sir Alexander, his brow creased in consternation, gently placed the quill in its holder and sat back. “That’ll be coming from the dungeon.”
“The dungeon? Why would music be comin’ from doon there?”
It was a good question, and one he didn’t feel much like answering, but he did. “Very likely because I’m a gullible old fool.” This he remarked as he laced his hands together, preparing to listen.
When Julius Blythe had been taken into custody, along with nine of his rough men, he had been less than healthy. The outlaw had surrendered, knowing he was trapped, and somehow a rogue crossbow bolt had still found its mark. He had not been pleased about that. The bolt had done severe damage, piercing the steel plates of the young man’s jack, and striking with enough force to render the lad unconscious. It was a cheap shot. Luckily, the wound was not particularly lethal, striking the right shoulder blade and lodging in the bone. Had it been an inch lower, it would have been a different story. It was not the only wound suffered. Julius Blythe had blocked a few other blows with his body. After the bolt had been removed, and the other wounds seen to, the young miscreant had been placed in an isolated cell, away from his men. He had been lying facedown in the straw, bloody, bruised, and just barely conscious, when he made the odd request. It was only because of perverse curiosity, and none of the surging memories from four years earlier, that Sir Alexander had complied. Sir Alexander, hooked and reeled like a brown trout into a maelstrom of problems, had turned from the dungeon and ordered his jailor to deliver an old instrument, knowing the lad could scarcely do anything but look at it. He had even smiled then, thinking what a torment that would be. But he wasn’t smiling now. Once again, it seemed the young Master of Blythe was going to make him look the fool.
The first song was a light, haunting lament, played the way only a man with too much idle time on his hands can play. Julius had been a great courtier, as he recalled, and his practiced artistry had never left him wanting for company, male or female. The effort, slightly detached yet coolly defiant, must have caused Blythe incredible discomfort. Lord Hume, with a smug look of satisfaction animating the creases of his face, picked up his quill and continued to write.
The songs continued as well.
His quill moved with greater effort.
The beat picked up pace.
The messenger began tapping his foot. And Sir Alexander, pausing in his difficult narrative, was visited by a long-forgotten memory of a smoky tavern across the border: a table strewn with half-empty tankards and pitchers of ale; lively, plump, painted women; platters overflowing with rich food; and a golden-headed young knight with
a lute who, with seamless artistry, had brought them all to tears. He steadied his hand and fought to ignore the music.
But the songs grew louder and bolder.
And then the singing started.
It started out light and a bit shaky. But after a song or two the halls of Hume echoed with a tenor so pure, and with a range so astounding, it was almost blasphemous. The servants stopped working to listen; for the songs this gilded popinjay, this profane Orpheus, sang were quite unique. The lute was strummed with a vigor Sir Alexander had never before heard, the notes clever and interesting. It was like the beat of a heart, pumping, surging—coursing through the veins with a growing intensity. It brought to mind the way a man feels standing on the edge of a field in the seconds before a great battle. It was the way a man feels in the throes of an unfettered and raging passion. Building, pulsating, unstoppable. The voice continued, this time singing joyfully, jauntily, irreverently. He was a master of metaphors, was Julius Blythe. Double entendres rolled off his tongue thick and sweet as honey. He sang of sun-dappled meadows and cool, bubbling streams, of frolicking water nymphs and of bathing virgins desperately seeking to shirk the title. These were no battle songs; these were the songs he feared most. And the prisoners, locked in the dungeon with him, were clapping in time with the frenetic rhythm, urging this brash child of mayhem and profligacy on. This was the Julius Blythe he remembered so vividly, the boy who had his mother’s angelic beauty and his father’s raw cunning. It was a lethal combination if ever there was one. And he had learned, firsthand, just how lethal.
The bawdy song, thankfully, ended. The castle erupted in loud cheers and voracious clapping. Sir Alexander, shaken, slammed his quill on the desk, utterly ruining his report and the quill. With a speed and abruptness that belied his harrowing day, he pushed his chair back and jumped to his feet. “Come!” he called to his courier and his guard, and stalked off, making a beeline for the dungeon.