The Unveiling (Age of Faith)

by Tamara Leigh

  Lavonne chortled and looked around. “Wulfrith did not murder your brother, fool woman!”

  Then she was wrong about Wulfen’s lord? Chest filling with what felt like relief, she asked, “If not Wulfrith, who murdered Jonas?”

  He put his head to the side and winced as if pained by the movement. “No one murdered him. Your brother hung himself.”

  Annyn’s relief withered as Wulfrith’s words returned to her: Your brother’s death was not honorable...most dishonorable.

  All of her rejected what both men told. Jonas, never sure of anything more than he was of himself, would not commit suicide, especially after he had found God. Either Lavonne lied or someone had told him a lie.

  “How do you know this?” she asked in a voice so strained she hardly recognized it.

  He shrugged. “All who were there that day at Lincoln know it. Wulfrith merely put the wound to Jonas to spare your family shame.”

  She could hardly breathe. “What shame?”

  “That your brother sided with Henry.”

  “The same as you, Lord Lavonne.”

  “The same as I do now.”

  She wondered about that. “Very well, but what has that to do with his death?”

  “Everything. He stole a missive delivered from Stephen to Wulfrith that revealed plans of attack against Henry’s army. Fortunately for Stephen, it was found in your brother’s pack ere he could deliver it across the lines.”

  Another lie. Or was it? Annyn’s hands trembled on the chair arms. Jonas had to have loathed squiring for a man allied to Stephen, but would he have betrayed Wulfrith? Had he, it would have given Wulfrith cause to hang him.

  “For his treachery,” Lavonne continued, “Wulfrith intended to send him home, but the shame was too much for your brother and he hung himself.”

  Annyn sprang to her feet. “You lie!”

  Lavonne gripped her arms so fiercely she would surely be marked.

  “Unhand me!”

  He jerked her forward, causing her to fall against him. “You are mine, Annyn Bretanne, as is Aillil. I shall have you both.”

  She dropped her head back. “There is naught that would convince me to take a drunk for a husband.”

  He released her, but only to once more raise a hand to her.

  Annyn threw up an arm to deflect the blow, but it did not land.

  With a strangled cry, Lavonne released her.

  Warily, Annyn lowered her arm.

  Pain shone beyond the fury contorting the baron’s face. Right hand clasping his left forearm against his body, blood running between his fingers, he stared at the misericorde that protruded from his upper arm—Jonas’s dagger.

  “You and your men are leaving Wulfen now,” Wulfrith said from where he stood before the curtains.

  “See what you have done to me!” Lavonne cried as he dripped crimson on the rushes.

  “Surely you remember lesson eight, Lavonne.”

  The baron bared his teeth. That a man so comely could turn so unbecoming was frightening.

  “I am no longer your pupil, Wulfrith.”

  “As you should never have been. Now gather your men and be gone from Wulfen.”

  The baron pointed at Annyn. “She belongs to—”

  “Now!”

  Lavonne sneered. “Henry shall hear of this.”

  “I expect so, and when he does, tell him that if he wishes to speak to me he should send a grown man.”

  As Lavonne sputtered, the curtain parted to admit Sir Everard with a sword in hand.

  Resisting the longing to probe her tender cheek that his gaze paused upon, Annyn clutched her torn tunic together.

  “Baron Lavonne is leaving,” Wulfrith said. “See that he does not tarry.”

  Sir Everard eyed the man. “Will you require a cart to convey you from Wulfen, Lavonne?”

  The bloodied man traversed the room. As he neared the curtains, Wulfrith proffered a hand. “The dagger.”

  “I shall bleed to death!”

  “Then you had best remove yourself quickly from Wulfen that you might tend your injury.”

  With a grunt of pain, Lavonne wrenched the misericorde free and glanced at Everard who tensed in readiness. Muttering an oath, he turned the misericorde hilt first and slapped it in Wulfrith’s palm. “My blood upon you, Wulfrith. Next time, it shall be yours upon me.”

  “Only if by foul means,” Wulfrith demeaned the man’s honor.

  Lavonne stared at him for what seemed time interminable, then stepped to the curtain. Everard followed him into the hall.

  Feeling Wulfrith’s gaze for the first time since he had entered the solar, Annyn averted her face and dropped to the edge of the chair.

  She heard Wulfrith’s feet on the rushes, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him cross to the small table beside the bed. He set the misericorde on it, dipped his hands in the basin, and wiped them on a towel. Next, he strode to his chest and produced a key to the lock she had attempted to open before Lavonne had entered the solar.

  As he searched the chest, Annyn stroked beneath her right eye. Not only was it tender and beginning to swell, but Lavonne’s ring had drawn blood at the corner.

  A shiver crept over her as memories of her mother’s bruises returned. Annyn’s father had been such a man as Lavonne, the kind she had vowed she would never marry. And she would not. She was almost grateful her end lay with Wulfrith.

  Once more struggling to put down his anger, Garr dragged a white tunic from the chest, crossed to Annyn Bretanne, and dropped it in her lap. “Don this.” He would have turned away, but what he glimpsed on her face made him look again. However, she dropped her chin before he could confirm what he had seen.

  Anger spreading as if his first lesson had never been taught him, he caught her chin. She allowed but another glimpse of the injury before jerking free.

  Aching for a sword to hand, Garr turned. And stopped two strides short of the chest. The woman tried to murder you. What do you care what Lavonne did to her? She is no better than he. Worse.

  Or was she? She believed her brother was murdered.

  Garr eyed the chest where his sword lay. Though he longed to twist a blade in Lavonne’s gut, he denied himself. Were Lavonne and his men not already gone from the castle, they would soon be.

  He returned to the chest, pushed aside his sheathed sword, and lifted out the salve that Brao—Annyn Bretanne—had returned to him.

  When he looked around, he saw she had risen from the chair. Keeping her back to him, she pulled the tunic over the one he had put the misericorde through and smoothed it down her hips. A woman’s hips—slightly flared for the making of children.

  Why Garr allowed his mind to wander so, he did not understand. He traversed the solar, but though she surely knew he was at her back, she did not turn. He caught her arm, but before he could pull her around, she gasped and wrenched free. Lavonne again?

  “Sit,” Garr ordered. When she warily complied, he dropped to his haunches before her.

  Though he thought she would hide her face again, she looked up.

  Why had he not seen the woman in her? Though it had struck him that Jame Braose was pretty, he had pondered no deeper in spite of the squire’s peculiarities. Had a man ever been so blind?

  In spite of her shorn hair and the blow to her cheek, she was pretty. Not beautiful, but comely with a pert nose, delicately arched eyebrows, bowed mouth, softly curving jaw, and large, pale blue eyes—eyes that, if ever they smiled, might melt a man.

  “Are you quite finished?” she snapped.

  Berating himself, he looked again, but this time as one assessing a prisoner. There was no self-pity in those eyes, not even hatred. Indeed, if there was a name for what braced her, it would be determination. She had endured a sennight of knighthood training, had her plans for revenge wrested from her, been revealed for a woman, and suffered Lavonne’s assault. Yet she did not succumb to despair. Unlike most women Garr had met, Annyn Bretanne was strong. If not for her p
urpose at Wulfen, he might admire her. Or perhaps in spite of it, he did.

  He offered the salve to her. Though she didn’t flinch as she smoothed it across her cheek, her jaw tightened.

  “Your arm as well,” he instructed.

  She hesitated before pushing up a sleeve to reveal the darkening bruises made by Lavonne’s cruel fingers.

  “I would not have had him harm you,” Garr said tightly.

  “Would you not?” She smoothed the salve into her skin. “I did try to murder you, Lord Wulfrith.”

  He did not need to be reminded of that. Or perhaps he did. “A man should never strike a woman.”

  “Then you would not raise a hand to me?”

  Her unreadable woman’s eyes did not say it, but he knew what she asked: what was to be her punishment if not something physical? As he had yet to determine that himself, he ignored her question. “That a man should never strike a woman is a lesson you would have learned were you Jame Braose.”

  A bitter smile caught up the corners of her mouth. “A lesson your student, Lavonne, did not learn.”

  Garr needed none to tell him that, especially this woman who was the most unworthy of all.

  She sighed and pushed up the opposite sleeve.

  Though Garr should have known she would be marked on both sides, he tensed further.

  When she finished with the salve, she held out the pot.

  As he had done a sennight past when she had burned her hand, he said, “You shall need it.” He straightened.

  She looked up, the salve on her cheek emphasizing Lavonne’s blow, the hard set of her jaw making her appear no less weary for the night’s revelation. Indeed, if he could read her eyes, he would likely see a woman struggling against collapse.

  “You are certain?” She turned the pot in her hand. “’Tis nearly as good a weapon as teeth.”

  She was proud of that. And she ought to be, considering something so impotent had afforded her escape, brief though it had been. “Keep it.” He turned away.

  “Do not say I did not warn you.”

  Behind, he heard the creak of the chair as she stood. “I am ready to leave.”

  Once more before his chest, Garr considered the tunic he had removed for the journey to Stern Castle. As there were two hours of sleep to be had before all of Wulfen Castle arose to the new day, he decided to delay their departure. Though he told himself it was best that they not ride through the dark while Lavonne and his men were out in it, it went beyond that. And he did not wish to know where.

  He removed rope from the chest. “We are not leaving. Not yet.”

  She eyed the rope as he strode forward.

  “Sit, Annyn Bretanne.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Garr glanced at Annyn where she rode alongside him. She was silent, as she had been throughout the ride, as she had been the two hours she had sat in the chair in his solar staring into the dim.

  Though he had intended to sleep that he might be rested for the long ride to Stern, he had watched her from the shadows drawn around his bed. Throughout, her only movement had been the one time she tested the ropes that bound her to the chair. Though his judgment of her may have gone astray, he did know how to tie a knot.

  He looked to the sun that was now perched past noon. The horses could not go much farther without being watered and rested, which meant leaving the open countryside for the wood. He did not like it, for there was the possibility they did not travel alone. Of course, considering Lavonne’s injury, he and his men had likely removed themselves from Wulfrith lands. And the Bretanne woman’s man, Rowan? He numbered only one. There was naught he could do against a dozen well-trained men. Still, Garr would be a fool not to wield caution.

  He captured Abel’s gaze and nodded toward the wood. They veered left, and Annyn Bretanne heeded the change of course as if she made the determination herself.

  When they slowed to enter the wood, they drew their swords. The vigilance of each man tangibly felt, they guided their horses to the stream.

  Garr dismounted. “Sir William, Sir Merrick, Squire Samuel,” he called, “stand guard.”

  As they turned to search out stations that would afford the best vantage, Squire Warren appeared at Garr’s side. The young man did not look away, but Garr knew he was shamed—as was Squire Samuel—not only for Annyn Bretanne’s breach of the solar, but that she had escaped. The shame was earned, though Garr knew it was more his blame than theirs. He had not better prepared them, but that would be remedied.

  He passed the reins to Squire Warren and strode around his destrier, only to find the Bretanne woman had already dismounted. As if he were not an obstacle in her path, she pulled the reins over her mount’s head and brushed past Garr to lead the horse to the stream.

  Wondering what thoughts occupied her, Garr stared after her. Did she hope Rowan would deliver her?

  “She troubles you, this sister of Jonas Bretanne,” Abel said as he came alongside.

  Garr scowled. “She is a troublesome woman.”

  “That is all?”

  It was not, which was the reason she was so troublesome. “That is all.” Garr returned his attention to where she stood before the stream that yesterday’s rain caused to overflow the banks.

  “You have told her the truth of Jonas’s death?”

  Garr pressed the heel of his palm to his sword hilt and kneaded it. That day at Lincolnshire, Abel and Everard had been there, and both had aided in making Jonas’s death appear honorable. “She knows all she needs to know.”

  “Are you sure it is enough?”

  Not for Annyn Bretanne, but it was for the best. “Aye.”

  “She is unlike any woman I have met,” Abel murmured, then grumbled, “She lightened my purse a goodly amount.”

  He spoke of the wager paid before their departure this morn. Regardless that Braose was revealed to be Annyn Bretanne, Everard would not let it keep him from collecting on his bet.

  “I have warned you against wagering him,” Garr said. “He rarely loses.”

  “And then only to you.”

  “Which is the reason he no longer wagers me. You ought to learn from that, Abel.”

  He grimaced. “Then what pleasure would be afforded me?”

  Garr knew to what he referred—the long stretches without a woman that suited neither Abel’s lusty bent, nor Everard’s, the civility of the hall, the discipline. But they were Wulfriths, and this was their destiny. Once wed, the administration of the lands they were given would regularly take them from Wulfen, but still they would return to train boys to men.

  “What pleasure?” Garr mused. “The pleasure of being the master of your coin.” He stepped past.

  “I thank you for that,” Abel called, then slyly added, “and your consideration of the Lady Annyn that granted me two hours of sleep I had thought were to be denied me.”

  That last pricked. Abel liked to think he understood people better than they understood themselves. But if that were so, he would not wager Everard.

  At the sound of Wulfrith’s approach, Annyn hugged her short mantle nearer and stared harder up through the trees.

  He halted at her back, causing her to stiffen though she tried to appear unmoved. “You require something, Wulfrith?” Just as she no longer affected a deeper pitch, neither did she afford him the title she had so loathed.

  “I ponder what you are thinking, Annyn Bretanne.”

  She turned. Though she knew his use of her full name—meant to deny her title—was a small thing, it reminded her too much of her audience with Henry when he had played her as a wooden soldier, moving and controlling her as he pleased. Resentment warming her bruised face, she said, “I am thinking I would have you cease calling me that.”

  He peered at her through narrowed lids. “Surely you do not ask that I call you Jame Braose?”

  She glared. “I ask that you not call me by my full name. I do not like it.”

  “You would have me call you Lady Annyn?”

&nb
sp; It did sound strange on his lips, especially considering this past sennight, that she continued to wear men’s clothing, and that she denied him his own title, but it was as she had always been called. “I do not doubt ’tis as displeasing to you as the drone of Annyn Bretanne is to me, but it is what I prefer.”

  “Very well. Now tell me, Lady Annyn, what are you thinking?”

  Of the tree from which Jonas was hung, of the lie Lavonne had told that had denied her rest before leaving Wulfen, of what Wulfrith would say if she confronted him with it. He would say nothing, she concluded. He would simply name Jonas’s death “dishonorable” as he had done on the night past.

  “I was thinking which evil I would choose given the opportunity—the ill end you have planned for me or marriage to Lavonne.”

  His dark eyebrows rose. “And?”

  “I fear one may be as bad as the other.”

  “That does not speak well of Lavonne.”

  She drew a hand from beneath the mantle and touched her cheek. “Nor does this.”

  A muscle twinged near his eye. It angered him. Regardless of his statement that striking a woman was something men should not do, she had yet to understand why he should care that the baron had struck her. After all, her attempt to kill Wulfrith made her more his enemy than Lavonne.

  “Come.” He turned away.

  Alarm leapt through her. Now he would mete out punishment? “Where?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “You have been hours astride, Lady Annyn. ’Twill be night ere our journey’s end.”

  Relieved her punishment was not at hand, grateful he was not more blunt about the need to relieve herself, she inclined her head. “Of course, but I can see to my own needs.”

  “You cannot.”

  He thought she would run. And he was right. Somewhere Rowan lay in wait, though how she was to take advantage of that with Wulfrith over her shoulder, she did not know. As she followed him away from the others, she met Squire Charles’s hard stare. She had made a fool of his lord. Thus, she had made a fool of his squire. And he resented it. If she could apologize, she would.