by Tamara Leigh
She stared.
His mouth curved slightly. “’Tis what you have waited to hear, is it not?”
She had thought her eyes too dry to weep anymore, but the tears surged from whatever well was within her. Liam Fawke had spoken his love to her. Though it could never be openly acknowledged, it was enough. “I feared you would never say it.”
He kissed the inside of her wrist. “A year ago, I would not have believed it possible to say—or feel—such, but for months ’tis what I have wanted to do.”
“Why did you not sooner?”
He lowered her hand to her lap and leaned his head back against the tree. “I could not, and still I should not have.”
She drew back, the better to see him. “Why? You know I love you.”
“Just as I know there is little hope of a future for us.”
True. Although she would always hold in her heart his words of love, she would never know the fulfillment of awakening beside him each morn, of bearing their sons and daughters, of laughter and tears and a strong hand to hold to when life turned cruel, of growing old with him as the world grew new.
“I am glad you spoke it,” she said. “Never shall I forget it.” She rose from Liam’s lap. “I must return.”
He stood and caught her arm. “I will stay as long as you need me.”
But not forever. “What of Thornemede?”
He brushed his lips across hers. “It can wait.” He stepped back, fastened the brooch at her mantle’s neck, and led her back to the sick house.
As she entered, she was struck by a scent so acrid her belly threatened to expel its bile. And there the strangely garbed physician was bent over Oliver whence the smell seemed to originate.
“What do you?” she cried and pulled free of Liam.
“Joslyn!” he called.
Her headlong flight was arrested when the physician straightened and turned to reveal the iron he held. It glowed red at the tip.
“He does not feel the pain, my lady. I gave him a powder to allow him to sleep through it.”
Liam’s hands fell to her shoulders, preventing her from shoving the physician aside. “’Tis what saved Emrys,” he said. “If there is any hope for your son, it lies with Ahmad. You must not interfere with his work.”
Was it possible this man from a far-flung country could do what had yet to be done at Ashlingford? Could he save Oliver?
Oliver who is almost gone from you, a voice whispered through her. At the worst, this man will sooner release him from his suffering.
She swallowed hard. “I wish to see my son.”
Ahmad’s eyes moved to Liam at her back, then he stepped aside.
Oliver was unclad on the pallet, but though his boils had been laid open and many cauterized, his face looked almost peaceful. Still, it was a terrible sight.
“The boils must be discharged, my lady,” the physician said. “The poison let out.”
She swung around, pressed her forehead to Liam’s shoulder, and gripped his tunic. “Do not let him die. I could not stand it.”
“Ahmad will do all he can.” He stroked her back, then guided her across the room to an empty pallet and pulled her down beside him. “When Oliver awakens, he will need you rested. You must sleep.”
“I do not think I can.”
“But you will.”
And pressed against his side, she did.
Loath to release her, Liam stayed with her until Emma groaned, then he gently eased Joslyn down and crossed to the woman.
“How is my Oliver?” she rasped.
He lowered beside her. “He is being tended to, Emma.”
Frowning, she searched a hand across the sheet spread over her. “Is it you, Liam?”
He covered her fingers with his. “It is.”
Her face relaxed. “I knew you would come. You love them too much to stay away.”
“I do.”
“Oliver?”
“He is better.” Liam did not know if he lied, but she needed to hear it.
“Such a good boy,” she murmured. “The same as my Maynard.”
Refusing to think on what his brother had later become, Liam asked, “Are you thirsty?”
“Aye. And I hurt so.”
He released her hand, but when he turned to the table, Ahmad was waiting with a filled cup. The Arab stepped past Liam and bent down beside the woman.
It was probably best she was too weary to open her eyes, Liam thought. Otherwise, she would be distressed by the strange face before her.
Though she seemed content with only a sip, Ahmad pressed the drink on her until the cup was drained. Then he lowered her head back to the pallet and straightened.
“How is she?” Liam asked.
“I gave her a draught to ease the pain, but I cannot save her. She will die ere morn.”
A great ache in him over the loss of this woman he had cared for, Liam asked, “And Oliver?”
Ahmad’s mouth moved slightly, but not near enough a smile. “The night will tell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Never had night been so long.
Oliver’s cries and violent thrashing tested Joslyn’s sanity, and though Liam urged her to sleep when her son fell into a restless slumber, she could not. It seemed all the physician had tried to do was for naught.
Believing Oliver would soon be lost to her, and needing these last, painful hours with him, she refused to move from his side.
Liam stayed near, and there was some comfort in the hand that was often on her shoulder where she knelt beside Oliver. Allowing her tears to fall, she spoke softly to her boy, and when he awakened in the course of a fit, cooled his brow.
Ahmad tended those in the other sick houses but returned often to examine Oliver. Sometimes he frowned, other times he shook his head, but more often he was without expression. He forced drink on her incoherent son, laid his cheek to the little boy’s to assess the strength of his fever, and applied salve to the cauterized boils.
And then a miracle.
Ahmad dropped back on his heels, fastened his gaze on Joslyn, and in a loud, strong voice said, “God is great. The fever has broken. Your son will live.”
She looked to Liam where he stood over her shoulder. “’Tis true?”
A smile rose on his drawn face. “Ahmad knows.”
She pressed a trembling hand to Oliver’s forehead. Not cool, but fire no longer moved beneath his skin. “Thank You, Lord,” she breathed, and as she gathered words of appreciation for the physician, discovered the man had gone.
She lowered her face into her hands and cried tears of joy that had more recently been of sorrow.
“Nay!” Emma wailed. “Not my Oliver.”
Joslyn looked around and saw her shake a fist heavenward. “Curse you!”
Realizing she must think the weeping was over the death of Oliver, rather than the life, Joslyn started to rise.
Liam urged her back down. “I will tell her.”
As she grasped her son’s hand, reveling in the life flowing through him, Liam bent beside the woman. “Oliver is well, Emma.”
She tossed her head side to side. “My boy is dead.”
“He is not. The fever has broken.”
She whimpered. “You think to spare me, Liam? Nay, I know the truth.”
He took hold of her shoulders. “Listen to me—”
“And you should know the truth now there is no one to protect.”
“What truth, Emma?”
“Ashlingford is yours. Has ever been yours.”
Should have been, Joslyn thought. But Emma’s next words went beyond which of the brothers had the greater claim. “Just as Maynard was not the true heir of Ashlingford, neither was his son.”
Joslyn gasped and Liam jerked as if struck. “What say you, Emma?”
“I did not wish to be a part of it. Never did I.”
“A part of what?”
“The deception. The lies. Ivo and Anya.”
Barely breathing, Joslyn watc
hed Liam’s hands close at his sides. “Tell me.”
“I did not love Maynard only for the years he spent at my breast. I…loved him like the son he was. Ivo’s and mine. Conceived and born without vows.”
The confession shook Joslyn like a high wind through leaf-weighted trees. If it was true, Liam and Maynard had been cousins. Meaning Maynard had not had a true claim on Ashlingford. Thus, Oliver had no claim.
“You make no sense, Emma,” Liam said.
“As it makes no sense I loved Ivo enough to allow him to get a child on me,” she said in a stronger voice, as if the unburdening of her soul strengthened her. “But wrongly I did.”
“Tell me all of it.”
Dear Lord, Joslyn beseeched, so many lies bound up in so many people—Emma, Ivo, Anya, Maynard, even Oliver.
“Ivo told me he loved me, then—” A fit of coughing came over her, and when next she spoke, her voice was so soft Joslyn had to strain to catch it. “He got me with child.”
“Maynard.”
“I was so fearful. So ashamed. But Ivo said he would provide for all, that he knew of a noblewoman unable to conceive who would take my babe and raise it up as hers, providing it was a boy.”
“Anya,” Liam growled.
Emma cleared her throat. “He said her husband had threatened that if she did not conceive, he would rid himself of her.”
Liam did not think he had ever been so aware of his breath, whose every pull and push was heard and felt. Never would Montgomery Fawke have set aside his wife for her inability to conceive. As he already had his heir in Liam, it would have suited him all the more that Anya was barren.
“So I would not be disgraced in my village,” Emma continued, “Ivo sent me to work in the manor house of an acquaintance of his. I know not what excuse Anya gave your father for birthing their child elsewhere, but I later learned she went into confinement during my fifth month of pregnancy.”
Liam remembered Anya’s absence several months before Maynard’s birth when he had been free of her cruelties.
“I knew I should not, but I came to love the babe inside me. But knowing it would be better for my child to grow up noble rather than misbegotten, I prayed for the boy the lady required.”
To steal from me what is mine, Liam seethed.
Emma groaned. “I am so dry. Wet my lips, Liam?”
He rose. Though he knew Joslyn watched, he did not look at her lest she saw in his eyes emotions sure to frighten her. He poured wine, returned to the woman, and held the cup to her cracked lips.
She sipped once before resuming her tale. “My boy was born, but when Ivo tried to take him, I could not give him over.”
“So you came to Ashlingford as his wet nurse.”
“They did not wish it, but I said I would reveal their lie if they tried to separate me from my child. Once at Ashlingford, I learned the reason for Maynard’s being, that it was no accident Ivo impregnated me. It was a plan devised by Anya and him.”
She lifted her head, clutched his tunic. “Maynard was their means of taking the barony from you—Ivo because he could not have it for himself, Anya because had she been able to bear a child, still your father would have loved you more.” Dropping back to the pillow, she released his tunic. “Let me rest a moment.”
How could I be so blind? Liam inwardly raged. And how had Montgomery Fawke not seen it? Ivo had shown too much interest in Maynard and Anya hardly any. Then there was Emma, who had loved him like the son he was.
“Liam.” Now it was Joslyn’s hand on his shoulder, her lowering beside him. “I am sorry. Had I known—”
“What? What would you have done?” It was said too sharply. But his response could be far worse.
A tremble in her hand on him, she said, “I would not have made a choice for Oliver that was not mine to make. Never would I have accompanied Ivo to London.”
Liam dropped his chin to chest. All the deception. All the lies. All the struggle to claim his place in the world. All the injustice of twice losing his inheritance to those with no right to it. All this anger whose waning he had welcomed amid light that had slowly…wondrously…sublimely reached into his darkness since his ride upon Rosemoor.
Holding breath beneath his throat, he fought the fire that, were the flames fanned, could consume not only him but those in its path. He must douse it. But with what?
Tears he had been taught at Wulfen Castle not to fear but to embrace as evidence of his humanity? Nay, those behind his lids were of insufficient quantity. More, they were born of anger.
What of Sir Owen of the Wulfriths’ lesson that he not allow wrath to command his actions and words? That he prove worthy of his name?
Fawke, he told himself. I am a Fawke, my father and mother’s son. Liam Fawke.
The fire wavered, lowered. But still it burned.
Then a voice in his ear, one he longed to hear all the days of his life no matter how much distance it put between Ashlingford and him. “I vow I would not have, Liam.”
Joslyn. She who loved him. She whom he loved. Yet fire, but in the absence of kindling, the promise of embers.
Opening hands he was not surprised had moved into fists, he lifted his head. “I know you would not have, Joslyn.”
As she searched his face, an uncertain smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. “Ashlingford is yours. I shall go before the king and bear witness to what Emma has told. He cannot deny you now.”
Liam did not believe Edward would refuse him a third time were the truth known. Still, the possibility of seeing those he loved injured—Oliver by the revelation his father was a deceiver and misbegotten, Joslyn by the ache of the cruelties her son would suffer—made him question if it should be known.
“I must tell you the rest of it,” Emma croaked.
He looked back at her, saw her eyes remained closed. “You knew what Ivo and Anya intended, yet you went along with it. Why?”
“I loved my son—wanted a good life for him.” The breath she drew wheezed noisily down her throat. “When I learned your father intended you to be his heir ahead of Maynard, my conscience was eased. I thought my son could still live well and you would not be cheated of what was yours.”
“But when my father died, Ivo and Anya petitioned the king to name Maynard heir. Still you said naught.”
Emma’s face contorted with pain. “Never did I believe the barony would be awarded to Maynard. ’Twas clear your father wished it for you and thought you the better choice. And you were. You may not believe me, Liam, but when Anya and Ivo returned from London triumphant, I threatened that if they did not recant Maynard’s claim I would tell the truth of my son’s birth.”
“Did Maynard know he was misbegotten?”
Emma shook her head. “I wanted to tell him when he began to turn from me to Ivo, but I feared it would ruin him to learn he was the illegitimate one. I could not.”
Would things have been different had Maynard known? Would he have renounced the title? “How did Ivo and Anya respond to your threat?”
“They tried to kill me.”
Liam felt Joslyn stiffen beside him. “How?”
“Poisoned my drink…did not know I saw.”
Might this explain Anya’s sudden death, which had so closely followed her husband’s? “You switched drinks with Anya?”
“God will judge me for it, but when she was not looking, I poured mine into hers.”
“And Ivo?”
“He guessed afterward.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“How could I? Ivo would have revealed what I had done to Anya. My sentence would have been death, and Maynard… Though Anya did not love him, he mourned her and I could not hurt him further.”
“And when my brother died?”
“Then there was Oliver.” A sob escaped her. “I loved him ere I laid eyes on him.”
Thus, her silence once again denied Liam the barony. “What of the writings? What have they to do with this?”
“The poisoni
ng was not the first time Ivo and Anya tried to be rid of me. From the moment I arrived at Ashlingford, there were incidents that, had they continued, would have seen me dead. So I put an end to them.”
“With the writings.”
“A friar came through on his way to London. I had him write down the truth—told him it was a confession I meant to present to your father. He believed he was doing good, never knowing I intended to use the writings to preserve my life. When they were finished, I showed a page to Ivo and told him the one who held them for me would deliver them to your father upon my death.”
Liam started to ask the reason Anya and Ivo had attempted to poison her if they knew they would be revealed, but he realized they had believed they had nothing to lose. With Emma dead, she could not speak the truth. Thus, all they had to fear were her writings, and they must have hoped that with Liam’s father no longer alive to receive them, they would not be delivered—and were they, Ivo or Anya could intercept them before they fell into Liam’s hands.
“Who was to have delivered your writings?”
A bitter laugh ended on a cough that sounded as if torn from her throat. When finally she could speak again, pain more deeply grooved every line in her face. “No one. There was none I could trust. Thus, unbeknownst to Ivo and Anya, the writings were ever in my keeping.”
Meaning had she died, they might never have been found. Though angered by the part she had played all these years, Liam forced down the emotion and, hoping she would find peace in unburdening herself, said, “Sleep now, Emma.”
She creaked open her lids. “Pray, forgive me, dear Liam. Never did I wish you harm. Upon my word, I did not.”
He squeezed her hand. “All is forgiven.” Or would be, given time. “Now rest.”
“You were always my boy, too,” she murmured. And spoke no more.
Silence settled, so thick and deep that were it mud it would be impossible to pass through. But Joslyn thinned it with the tearful words, “Soon she will leave us.”
Liam stood and reached to her. “Ahmad says by morning.” Her hand in his made his chest ache, the brush of her body against his as he drew her up made him long to hold her close. “I must leave you now.”