Valentine

by Heather Grothaus

  A frown began to appear below the bushy eyebrows and his gaze flicked to the rear of the room with suspicion now. “What’s this about?”

  “If you wish to preserve the reputation of your fine establishment, you will listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say.”

  Mary stole furtive glances at Valentine as he had what at first appeared to be an altercation with the inn’s proprietor, and then seemed to engage in serious conversation with the capped and aproned man. At her left, Lady Elmsbeth prattled unceasingly, but Mary could not have repeated a word of what the old woman was saying. It didn’t seem to matter to the dowager that Mary contributed little to the conversation save for the occasional head nod or assenting hum.

  Then, suddenly, the bearded man stood up from the table in the same moment as Valentine, and each went in opposite directions across the tavern floor—the innkeeper disappearing through an apparently guarded doorway and Valentine striding past Mary’s table to exit the inn through the rear, his hood drawn up. He did not spare her even the slightest glance.

  Something was afoot, but Mary had no idea what it could be, and her nerves jangled so that she felt her skin would leap from her flesh at any moment.

  She did give a little jump in her chair and a gasp of surprise when the inn’s proprietor suddenly reappeared at her elbow between Mary and Lady Elmsbeth.

  His accent was thick. “I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said to the dowager, although his eyes flicked to Mary as he spoke. “There is a small problem in moving your belongings.”

  “What?” Lady Elmsbeth squawked. “What problem?”

  “I am not certain,” the bearded man said with some difficulty, and Mary noticed the beads of sweat along his forehead, soaking into the edge of his cap and darkening the velvet. “I . . . there—”

  He never got to finish his struggling explanation, as the dowager stood up from her chair with an exasperated sigh. “Never mind. I shall see to it myself. Will you be so kind as to keep watch over my ward? Do whatever you must to keep her here.” She didn’t bother to acknowledge the innkeeper’s hasty nod but looked to Mary and pointed a gnarled finger at her. “I shall be but a moment, child. Do not move from this table, lest further misfortune befall you.”

  At her words, the innkeeper’s eyes widened, and Mary saw him swallow. He bowed quickly, averting his horrified expression from Lady Elmsbeth as the old woman swept toward the doorway and disappeared from the common room.

  Then the man stood upright and took hold of Mary’s arm, helping her to stand gently but quickly. “Hurry, Your Royal Highness,” he said and began pulling her toward the back of the tavern. “Your man has found you and is waiting through the back. Hurry!” he prompted. He released her at the door and then gave a grandiose bow. “Go with God, and remember with kindness me and my humble inn to your father.”

  Mary was not certain what game Valentine had played with the man, but she thought it best to reinforce the ruse. A long-handled dipper hung on a peg near the door and Mary grabbed it, holding it up before her face, as if it were a scepter or sword.

  “Kneel, good man,” she said haughtily, and the innkeeper’s eyes widened as he fell to the floor. At the last moment, he swiped his cap from his head and clasped it to his chest with both fists.

  “For service rendered to my family, I hereby dub you a knight of the realm, so that you may be—” Mary faltered a bit—“that you may be recognized in . . . in our land as such, and receive all applicable . . . ah, favors due to you.” She tapped him on each shoulder and then shoved the ladle into his clenched hands. “Thank you.”

  Before she could say anything more, someone grabbed her from behind and nearly jerked her from her feet as she was pulled from the doorway.

  It was Valentine, his robes now discarded, and together they ran with linked hands down the alley toward a horse tethered to the back of a cart. Valentine released her and gathered the reins of the beast before swinging up onto its bare back. He held one hand down to her.

  “Hurry, Maria,” he commanded, and then yanked her up in front of him.

  “How did you manage to buy a horse so quickly?” she asked as he wheeled the steed around in the close alley.

  “We are no buying. We are stealing,” he said, and then Mary could do nothing but cling to his arms as Valentine gave a shout and the horse leapt into a gallop, carrying them away from the inn.

  They did not slow until they were across the bridge and had zigzagged over perhaps a mile of twisting streets. Then Valentine guided the horse into a stable and helped Mary to slide down before he, too, dismounted.

  A young man approached and took the reins from Valentine.

  Valentine fished a coin from his pack and gave it to the man. “The remainder this eve.”

  “Aye, milord.” The young man didn’t look at them twice, only led the horse away.

  Then Valentine turned and left the stable, and Mary found herself skipping to keep up with him on the street.

  “What are we to do with a third horse?” she asked him. “And a stolen one at that?”

  He refused to look at her. “We shall no be retrieving the horse, Maria. It will be found by its owner soon enough, fed and well tended.”

  “Oh! I see,” Mary said. “What did you tell the innkeeper? He called me ‘your royal highness.’ ”

  “I told him you were a princess who was being forced into a political foreign marriage by your aunt against your father’s will. If you were no returned to him, it would start a war.”

  “My goodness,” Mary marveled. “I’m glad I knighted him.”

  Valentine looked twice at her and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, gave her a rueful grin. “That is what you were doing with the spoon? Knighting him?”

  Mary shrugged. “It was all I could think of.”

  “A nice touch,” Valentine conceded. “Although the party you were traveling with—I assume the English pilgrims, yes?” At her nod, he continued. “They might find the rest of their stay uncomfortable, as the innkeeper now thinks them enemies of the king of England.”

  Mary winced. “I feel terrible to have done that to them. They were only trying to help me.”

  “You should feel terrible,” Valentine agreed. “But no for them. I must venture once more to the part of the city beyond the bridge on the morrow, and there will surely be an alarm raised to locate you. Your companions will perhaps recall me from the tavern, and so I will be forced to abandon my robes as a disguise.”

  He was going back to the cathedral tomorrow, to see his love again, Mary realized. And although she was sorry to have caused him the trouble of rescuing her, she was petulantly happy to have made his rendezvous difficult.

  Was she jealous? Of a nun?

  Mary had meant to apologize to him, but now she found she could not force the words from her throat as she recalled the loving way Valentine had looked upon the beautiful woman.

  They snaked through endless alleys without speaking, and Mary was just about to voice her plea that, if they were not drawing near to the Owl, she must have something to drink. The close streets between the buildings were stifling in the afternoon heat, and the stench of the refuse along the gutters seemed to bloom with the rising temperatures.

  But Valentine delayed her request by asking a question of his own. “Why did you follow me?”

  Mary thought for a moment before replying. “Because I didn’t want to be left alone again. And—” she thought she might as well be honest—“I wanted to see where you were going.”

  Valentine suddenly stopped before a wide oaken door and gave a deliberate pattern of raps with his knuckles. In a blink, Karl swung the door wide. He and Valentine exchanged words in the foreign tongue Mary did not understand, and then the big bald man handed Valentine a key.

  Mary followed him down the corridor as he spoke to her over his shoulder, holding up the small piece of metal. “We are fortunate to have Brennie looking after us. In any other brothel, we would be returning to an e
mpty room.”

  Mary realized that she had abandoned the room to follow Valentine with no thought for the satchels of their belongings she had left behind—including the one that contained her own purse.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally, stiffly, as he fit the key into the door and then pushed it open.

  He gestured for her to precede him. “Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry for following you,” she said, removing the lace from her head and draping it across the back of a chair.

  “You are no sorry for that,” Valentine argued in a monotone voice, closing the door and tossing his satchel on the table. “You got what you wanted, yes? You saw where I went?”

  Mary turned to look at him. “You’re right. I’m not sorry for that. I apologize for leaving the room unattended, then.” She poured herself a cup of water from the fresh pitcher on a tray. Brennie was certainly anticipatory of her guests’ wants. If Valentine did anything right, he made sure to surround himself with amazing women. Mary drained the cup and straightaway poured another.

  Perhaps it was the residual energy left over from encountering Lady Elmsbeth; from the danger of escaping the inn on a stolen horse through a foreign city; perhaps the shock of seeing Valentine in such a way that she never had before, but Mary felt herself itching for answers. For an explanation.

  She raised the cup to her lips but before drinking asked, “Is she the reason you left Aragon?” She swallowed the cool water, but Valentine only looked at her, so she pressed on. “The reason you did not honor the marriage contract?”

  Mary thought he would simply refuse to answer. So it was a surprise when he said, “Yes.”

  Although she had already guessed as much, the admission caused Mary’s heart to skip a beat, her stomach to flutter. How different would her life have been if not for the beautiful woman in the cathedral garden? Perhaps she and Valentine would have been happy. Perhaps they would have children now and be living at Beckham Hall together, or even in Valentine’s homeland.

  One thing she knew for certain: she would not be hiding in a brothel in Prague, trying to evade detection on her race back to England to marry a man she hardly knew.

  “You love her still,” Mary said, the words a statement rather than a question.

  “Her name is Teresa,” Valentine said. “And yes, Maria, I love her very much.” He picked up the cup Mary had discarded and poured himself a drink.

  Mary had known as much. But it seemed as if his matter-of-fact admission knocked upon an ancient and—up to this point in her life—very locked chamber in her heart filled with nothing but rage and resentment. The opulent room around her pulsed with her own heartbeat. Her chest tightened; her fists clenched. She watched Valentine’s throat as he swallowed his drink, gulp after gulp.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Mary walked deliberately toward Valentine Alesander and let that door swing wide, slapping him so soundly that the cup still held to his lips went flying across the room, flinging an arc of water through the air.

  “You heartless bastard,” she said in a low voice, her eyes boring into his. One of his eyebrows quirked, but it was the only expression of surprise as he swiped his forearm across his mouth. “I had no one. No one. My parents were dead; the king had forgotten me. I was alone at Beckham Hall all those years, with only a child’s nurse for companion.” She beat her flat palm against her chest. “When I at last find someone who wanted me, I needed your leave to gain my freedom. And what did you do in the midst of our journey? You left me in a brothel while you visited the woman for whom you abandoned me!”

  “It is no as you think, Maria,” Valentine said in a grave tone. “But even if it was, you would never have wanted a man such as me. I am no English lord.”

  “I am confident my parents were aware of your heritage when the contract was made,” she said. “And don’t tell me what I would or would not have wanted. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I think it is you who does no know anything about you,” Valentine countered.

  Mary glared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You say you want this man—this knight? You leave your comfortable little prison and risk your life to find me—the criminal, the reprobate—that I might rush back with you in secret and renounce my claim. No one can ever know that you were to be mine, yes? There can be no taint upon the reputation. And yet with me you tease, you play bold, you follow me. You expect me to save you, but you will throw me away when you are done.”

  Mary felt heat rushing up her neck and turned from him so that he could not see. “I have no choice in what I am doing. You gave me no choice when you forgot about me!”

  “What is it, Maria?” he demanded, ignoring her accusation. “What do you expect to gain from this little game you play?”

  “My life is no game!” she shouted, spinning around to face him once more. She struck her breast again, this time with both fists, her fingers clawing at the material of her bodice and hanging there tangled. She felt the shocking tracks of wetness down her heated face, but she didn’t care. “I’ve been so lonely for so long, and I just want to have a family—a husband, children! People who are mine, who belong to me and I to them. Someone who at last doesn’t find me so infinitely easy to leave behind!”

  Valentine’s expression was drawn, enigmatic. “And you are angry with me now because you think that I am that man?”

  “No,” she said at last on a shuddering breath. She sniffed, covered her eyes with her hands for a long moment, and then dropped them with a sigh. “You are not that man now. But perhaps you could have been. And I would have tried very hard to make you as happy as does your Teresa.”

  He walked toward her then, and Mary held out her hands to ward him off. She was so embarrassed; she did not want his pity.

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  But he ignored her, collapsing her extended arms between them as he drew her near. She turned her face away and pushed at him, but he held her firm and then took her chin in his hand and forced her to look up at him.

  “Maria, you would no have to try very hard to make me happy,” he said, his eyes holding no hint of amusement. “Then or now. Forgive me for ever making you think otherwise.” Then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her as she’d wished he would a hundred times since leaving the old mill.

  And he kept kissing her. Until she realized that he was no longer holding her captive, and she let her arms go around his waist to clutch at his back, pulling him closer. She felt as if she’d finally come to a place that was familiar, safe, in the embrace of this man who’d been intended to be hers but that she could now never have. He held her at her waist, at the nape of her neck, his thumb caressing her jaw. His stubble scraping her lips and chin felt both foreign and right and she breathed in the scent of him.

  He finally pulled away, but only far enough to look into her eyes. “I am sorry that I left you behind, Maria,” he said quietly. Mary wished she knew which instance he was referring to, but then decided it didn’t matter as he continued. “I promise that I never will again before you are returned to your home. You will be at my side until that day.”

  Mary felt as if she might cry again, but she managed to nod.

  “And although it can no change things between us now, you must never think that I abandoned you,” Valentine said, still stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Teresa is my sister.”

  Chapter 13

  Maria’s lovely, tear-glistened eyes blinked. “Your sister?”

  “Yes.” He steadied her as they drew apart, not wishing to be without her in his arms but recognizing that if he was ever to get through the telling of this tale, they would need to be separated.

  And wine. They would need wine. Perhaps a lot.

  Valentine led her to the table and she sat down in a chair heavily, as if their argument had nearly been all she could physically endure. He had never intended to reveal to Maria the details of his exile from Aragon, and now he wanted
to even less. It was best that she actually think the worst of him, but Maria was correct—he did owe her an explanation, and it never occurred to him to lie to her. If there was anyone on earth who deserved to know the truth about his life, it was Maria.

  He retrieved the cup from the floor in a corner of the room and brought it back to the table, filling it and another from the taller decanter on the tray and setting one of them before Maria. She whispered her thanks before drinking, and then simply sat there, waiting.

  “My mother bore my father seven children,” he began, deciding to walk about the room as he did the telling, the memories too haunting and terrible to sit with for very long. “Two of those never drew breath; two more lived only a few days. Six boys, in all. Enrique is my older brother, by six years. When I was ten and two, Teresa was born. Her miracle, Mama called Teresa—the only girl. But Mother’s body was tired, and this time it was she who nearly died instead of her babe. She was no the same after Teresa, although she would live to see her girl reach seven.

  “My father was a wealthy man—a baron, I think he would be in your England. He was ruled by no man, although he renewed his fealty to Aragon’s Crown every year. Enrique was always a greedy boy, pressing my father to war, to absorb some of the smaller holdings around us, but my father refused. He had his honor. When Mama died, he did no know what to do with himself. He died only a year later.”

  Valentine had almost forgotten Maria was present until she spoke. “And that left your brother, Enrique, the estate.”

  “Yes.” Valentine nodded, coming back to refill his cup. “As I said, Enrique was greedy. He refused to swear allegiance to the king. And he went to war with everyone—everyone!” He gave a harsh laugh. “We lost so much—so many men, so much of our wealth. He never held anything he gained for long. He began to charge his own family a sum for coming to our villa—a tax for having the misfortune of being related to him, I suppose. Our people were beginning to refuse him service. They would no fight for such an honorless man. I, of course, would no support his lunacy.”