“Of course you can. Your victory, and the way you achieved it, mean that I can not stay here now.”
His expression softened a little. “I understand your position, but I can not let you leave. When I came here, Morvan gave me very few orders, leaving things to my judgment. But one of those orders was very clear. If by some means I took this tower, I was to see to the safety of Lady Reyna. Since you are she, I can not let you leave.”
“My safety? Sir Morvan bothered with an order regarding me? Why?”
“I believe it was at the request of your father.”
“Duncan! Duncan Graham's request? What has Sir Morvan to do with Duncan and the Grahams?”
“He has an alliance with them to ensure their neutrality in this conflict. Your safety was a condition of that agreement.”
“I will be perfectly safe if I leave. Safer, in fact. You must permit it.”
“Nay. Other than that, I accept your terms. I will treat the people here like my own so long as they obey me, and the men will be restrained. Is there anything else?”
Her confused mind could think of nothing else.
“Then remove your weapon and place it on the floor. The tower is taken and the lands long secured. You have tried your best for your people, and negotiated well. It is time to yield.”
She stepped back and did as she was told. He rose, walked the few paces to her, and hovered, his contained anger leaking out in dangerous ways.
“Now, my lady, listen carefully, for I will tell you this only one time. Twice now you have raised a weapon on me. The next time, be prepared to use it.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to the chamber door. “You will come to the hall and hear me give the orders so that you know that I keep my word.”
The castle folk packed the hall. As she and Ian entered, her eyes quickly found Alice. The plump old cook shrugged sympathetically.
Ian pulled her with him to the front of the crowd, onto the dais with the high table. She surveyed the sea of faces. Some grimaced sadly at her predicament, but most eyed her suspiciously. She guessed that word of her presence in the enemy camp had spread, and they were drawing conclusions according to their prejudices.
Ian gestured for attention, and a hush fell. “I claim these lands in the name of Morvan Fitzwaryn,” he began. “Some of you are old enough to remember his father, from whom Maccus Armstrong took Harclow many years ago. Sir Morvan comes to reclaim what is rightfully his, and which King Edward has returned to him by decree. This is no conquering army, but the return of your true lord. Obey and you will be well treated. Any man who swears his parole may move about freely.”
The tension in the chamber cracked, and relief flowed. Ian dragged Reyna outside to the top of the tower stairs and spoke with the army gathered below. There the mercenaries learned that there would be no raping or looting or killing.
“Are you satisfied, my lady?” he asked when he had finished.
“If they obey, I am satisfied. I assume that your orders extend to me, and that you no longer expect me to entertain your knights.”
The torchlight played over his handsome face, making his beauty appear mysterious. He wore a sleeveless tunic, and the binding on his arm where she had cut him glowed like a banner.
“They extend to you. But I will not try to create a monastery here. I do not interfere with willing adults. You should tell the women to avoid misunderstandings.”
“So your men may bed any woman who is willing. Does that extend to me, too? May I take a man who pleases me to my bed if I am willing?”
He smiled his disarming, devastating smile. “Aye.”
He reached out and lightly stroked her cheek, then tilted her chin up. It was a gesture that spoke familiarity, even affection. She realized in that instant that he did not simply assume that she found him attractive because all woman did, but knew it for a fact because he had sensed her reactions to his kiss and caress.
She resented the little shiver that defeated her efforts to remain indifferent to his touch. It was distressing that he could evoke this. Her responses, and his knowledge of them, filled her with anger.
“Any man who pleases me?”
He shook his head. “Just this one.”
She stepped away from his touch and laid her finger thoughtfully on her lips. Very slowly, she walked around him, examining him just as he had done her earlier in the day. She barely resisted the urge to prod at his muscles and tell him to lift his hoof. When she had completed her circuit, she saw the combination of amusement and annoyance in his eyes. She had laid a trap for this conceited Englishman, and he knew it.
“Well, Sir Ian, if it is your goal to become known as the Lord of One Thousand and One Nights, you had better look elsewhere.” Feeling the only satisfaction she had earned on this dreadful day, she turned primly on her heel and walked away.
“Reyna,” he called after her softly. “I think that I just heard the sound of a gauntlet being thrown.”
Chapter FOUR
The next morning, Ian sent half of the company to Harclow with news of the capture of the tower house. He then began assigning the remaining men to chambers and barracks and deciding who would remain outside in the camp. All the while that he established his command of the tower, he kept looking for the slender body and silver-blond hair of Robert of Kelso's widow.
She never appeared. If he had not been sure that no one had slipped past the guards he had posted at the end of the postern tunnel, he might have suspected that she had escaped. Succumbing to curiosity and concern, he ventured into her room next to the solar. Parchments spilled off a table in the spartan chamber, but the lady remained invisible.
He attended the midday meal tired, hungry, and in a mild state of anticipation. His stomach remembered the taste of Reyna's meat pies as surely as his lips remembered the dew of her skin. He looked forward to feasting on the tower cook's delicious food and sparring with the spirited little Reyna.
Taking the lord's chair at the high table, he was annoyed to find the place beside him quickly claimed not by Reyna, but by Margery, Thomas Armstrong's wife, one of the ladies left behind when the knights fled.
Margery was an attractive, sharp-featured woman in her early thirties. She wore her red hair in an intricate coif and possessed a lush figure well displayed by her tight cote-hardie. She smiled very warmly and Ian, feeling an uncharacteristic lack of confidence regarding his odds of success with Lady Reyna, smiled back.
He let the effect sink in, then turned his attention to the arriving food. He was cursed with a stomach totally unsuitable for a soldier. Eating his company cook's food had been the greatest torture of camp life these last years. Knowing those pies had come from the tower would have almost been incentive enough to storm the walls if his deception of Lady Reyna had failed.
As the cauldron approached, he eyed its contents suspiciously. The spoonfuls of glop that landed on his plate looked depressingly familiar. He dipped some bread and tasted. The bland flavor killed his appetite at once.
Andrew, the keep's steward, moved about the hall, and Ian called him over. “Who prepared this?”
“The cook.”
“Your cook or my cook?”
“Our cook, but your cook supervised. Nothing went into that pot that he did not see. You can eat it with complete confidence.”
Andrew spoke in reassuring tones. The man was in his late fifties, rather short and small-framed, with meticulously groomed gray hair and beard. He bore a courtly, restrained manner marked by an elegant impassivity.
“Why wouldn't I have confidence in it?”
Lady Margery leaned close. “Under the circumstances, you would not want to eat just anything here, would you? I certainly would not,” she said.
“What are you suggesting, my lady?”
“Well, consider that Robert was poisoned, and that Alice the cook has always been practically a mother to Reyna, and came with her from the Grahams. Reyna sometimes helps Alice, and personally prepared her husband's food those l
ast days—” Margery raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “My husband always demanded that a man watch the food preparation after we came. No substance entered the food served in this hall that was not recognized by the watcher.”
Ian stared down at his plate. If his own cook supervised now, that meant that no herbs, fruits, roots, or anything else that imparted flavor would find its way into the pot.
“I assumed that you would want to continue the practice,” the steward said coolly. “Seeing as how you are the enemy.”
Ian dismissed Andrew and decided to give Lady Margery more attention. “What do you mean, Sir Robert was poisoned?”
“He was hale and fit one day, and vomiting and in pain the next. Three days later he was dead.”
“He was over sixty, I have heard. Old men die.”
“Aye, and at first most were inclined to think thus, except a few of us who wondered from the start. After all, Reyna nursed him, and had often cooked for him in the evenings if he came in late from the demesne. It is a quaint interest of hers. Not becoming to a lady, but then neither are those books and letters. The servants report that she fed him potions while sick that seemed to make it worse, too. But what really pointed the finger was the bishop's letter.”
Despite himself, she had his interest. “What of this letter?”
“Soon after Maccus sent my husband here, a letter came for Robert from the bishop in Glasgow. It seems that Robert had written to him on a matter of great importance seeking his advice. The letter referred to this matter, and said that the bishop would investigate the proper disposition of the matter, but could not visit himself until summer's end.”
“What matter was this?”
“The letter did not say, but it is clear, is it not? Robert planned to put Reyna aside, and sought the bishop's advice on how to proceed. Maccus enfiefed these lands to Robert and his descendants, but there are no heirs. They had been married twelve years and she is barren. As you said, Robert's time was limited.”
“And so it is thought that the lady, knowing her husband planned this, killed him?” He put more sarcasm into his voice than he truly felt. Husbands had been disposed of for less. “Not much proof.”
“Along with her attempt to escape judgment by helping you last night, the proof seems very clear to me.”
Ian almost explained that Lady Reyna had not come to him to betray her people but to save them, and had tried to kill him in the process. Even as the words formed, he bit them back. Reyna had not given any story about last night in her defense, and now he understood why. Her attempted murder of him would only support this other accusation against her.
Had she done it? He bore a cut in his arm that proved her capable of such things. She had planned to run away, a usual sign of guilt, and had tried to negotiate her departure even as the tower fell. And yet, while he had learned a healthy skepticism regarding the honesty and constancy of women, he hadn't sensed evil in this one. Quite the opposite.
With the intimacy of gossip now binding them, Lady Margery chattered on through the meal. Ian didn't pay much attention to her tales of the old feud between the Armstrongs and Reyna's family, the Grahams, which in Margery's opinion only supported Reyna's guilt. He didn't bother to point out that Sir Robert had not been an Armstrong, because his fealty to Maccus had essentially made him one.
The whole time he kept his eyes on the various entrances to the hall, looking for Reyna. This tower's five levels were connected by two sets of stairs, not to mention the secret ones he had discovered in the walls. That made it difficult to keep track of anyone who did not want to be found.
He gazed around the hall which filled the second level and took a rough measurement. He mentally compared it with his memory of the building's exterior. The walls must be almost fifteen feet thick. They would need to be at the base to support the weight, but up above, some of those walls had probably been hollowed out for chambers.
Lady Reyna could probably live to old age here without his ever seeing her again.
“Lady Reyna has not attended the meals,” he observed to Margery, interrupting an unfortunate turn in the conversation where she probed about his past. He wondered what had given women the notion that men liked to talk about such things.
“She never does. At least not since Thomas and I arrived. She eats in the kitchen with Alice. A few others do too.”
Ian pushed away from the table. He had not visited the kitchens yet. This seemed a good time.
As he descended the stone stairs, sounds of conversation and laughter drifted to him. So did the aroma of very good food.
All talk ceased when he appeared in the threshold. Two plank tables seating twenty-five people cramped the center of the chamber, and a servant girl stirred a pot hanging in the large hearth. Andrew Armstrong ate here, and some serving women and two men he recognized as grooms. An old, thickset woman he guessed was Alice sat between two boys about ten and eight years old. Other children peered around their mothers and fathers at him. He didn't see Reyna.
At the far end of one table he spied Morvan's man, Gregory, and he walked to him with fifty eyes watching his progress. Gregory grinned up sheepishly. “I happened to walk by, and it seemed a merry group,” he explained.
Ian looked down at Gregory's plate. A moist slice of duck and a colorful mix of roots lay in a pool of brown sauce. The scent made his mouth water. Evidently Alice the cook did her duty for the diners in the hall, and then practiced her art for this little group.
He broke off a piece of Gregory's bread and dipped it in the sauce. It had almost reached his mouth when a wooden spoon flashed by his face like a catapult. It smashed into his hand, and the morsel flew across the room onto the floor.
“Don't you dare, you English whoreson,” a familiar voice warned.
He turned in surprise to the servant girl who had been stirring at the hearth, only it wasn't a servant but Lady Reyna, dressed in a loose, simple gown with a kerchief tied around her head.
She shook the spoon at him. “Not one bite, you devil. If you get sick, I'll not have people pointing at Alice or myself.” She took her place on the bench. “Besides, there isn't enough for you, and because of your damn siege this is the first fowl or meat these women and children have had in over a month.”
Ian made a mental reminder to speak with the lady sometime about her cursing. “Was the tower so badly provisioned as that? There should have been dried fish and meat to last this long.”
From the other end of the table Andrew Armstrong coughed for attention. “Sir Thomas ordered only the men to have such things. They might have had to fight, and there was no telling how long the siege would last. It is customary, of course.”
Aye, it was customary, and Ian had seen and caused it before, but he felt an unusual guilt all the same.
“Who cooked this food?” he asked, taking more bread, dipping it, and popping it into his mouth before Reyna could attack. Delicious.
“Alice and myself,” Reyna said, eyeing his throat, daring him to swallow.
These then were the castle folk who did not think her a poisoner. Very deliberately, he dipped again, popped, and chewed at length.
“You all will no longer eat here, but join the others in the hall,” he ordered. “Alice, cook as you see fit, with such assistance as you choose. No one will watch. Gregory, organize some hunts so there is plenty of fresh meat.” He turned to Reyna. “You, my lady, will attend all meals. When the food is brought in, you will eat first.”
The kerchief, dipping low over her brow and tied behind her neck, completely hid her bound hair. He thought that she looked fresh and charming all the same. He wondered if he had passed her numerous times today and simply not recognized her.
Her sensual lips pursed. “What makes you so sure that I will not kill myself to get the chance to do away with you and this army?”
“You might if it were just you, but you will not risk your people, that much I know,” Ian said as he retreated to the stairs. “Besides, my lady
, if you knew a recipe for poison, you would be dead already.”
Later that afternoon, Andrew Armstrong approached while Ian directed the walling up of the postern tunnel. The steward looked unruffled and courtly in the heat despite his wool pourpoint. Ian himself was sweating like a plow horse.
“There is a small problem, sir,” Andrew said mildly.
“What kind of problem?”
“It is the well. It seems to have run dry. It was fine this morning, but just now some servants went to draw water and— nothing.” Andrew spread his hands and smiled blandly.
Ian sighed at Andrew's mastery of understatement. The well running dry was hardly a small problem. “Show me.”
He trailed Andrew up the forty steps to the keep's only entrance off the hall, and down the forty steps to the kitchen. Damn border tower houses. In one day he had grown to hate the eternal stairs.
In a small cellar chamber off the kitchen, Andrew presented the errant well with a small flourish. Ian lifted the bucket and let it drop on its rope until he heard a thump instead of a splash. He brought it back up even though he knew it would be empty. “Has this ever happened before?”
“I have been here over twenty years, since Maccus took the lands. Once before, during a drought, it happened.”
“It has been hotter and drier than normal, but not a drought.”
“Well, with water, one can never tell, can one?”
Ian began pacing off the chamber in methodical rows. “Did Robert Kelso hold these lands all those years?”
“Not until his marriage to Lady Reyna. It was an arrangement to end a blood feud between the Armstrongs and the Grahams that had started eight years earlier. Maccus had no unmarried sons or nephews to represent the Armstrongs, and everyone in these parts knew his knight Sir Robert to be an honorable man. Even Duncan Graham respected him. When the match was made, Sir Robert received these lands. He held them through Maccus, but it was understood that they formed a buffer between the Armstrongs to the north and south and the Grahams to the east. A neutral area, so to speak.”
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