The man lifted a slash of brow, clearly perplexed. "I do well remember your mother, my lady, but you—" His eyes widened. "Little Isobel, is it?" His smile was white and dazzling in his dark face, and he held out a hand to grasp hers, spinning Isobel around with a well-practiced gesture. "You've grown to quite a beauty."
Isobel near simpered, and Lyssa clenched her fist to quell her urge to slap the girl.
Margate bowed as Lyssa approached. "My lady," he said with a nod. "I have with me a message to you from the king."
Lyssa accepted the folded parchment, wondering why he kindled such strong feelings of dislike. As if he sensed her disapproval, he lifted his chin under her measuring gaze, a faint, amused smile tilting the corners of his mouth. Cold eyes, Lyssa decided. Cruelty around the thin lips. "Thank you," she said.
With a gleam in her eye, Isobel prodded her stepmother. "Will you not read it, my lady?"
"In a little," she replied, tucking the parchment into her bodice. "Margate, you'll find refreshment laid out for you in the hall."
"I'll lead you there," Isobel said, tucking her arm into the knight's elbow.
Stableboys came to take the horses, and the troupe of squires and knights moved as a body toward the hall, leaving Lyssa to stand alone in the courtyard, the parchment burning against her breast. For a long moment, she only stood there, the taste of Thomas still on her mouth, the feel of him against her body.
He joined her now, his face a severe mask. "Open it," he said gruffly.
With a hand that trembled faintly, she drew the letter from her bodice and broke the seal. And when she had read it through, she raised anguished eyes to Thomas's face. She did not need to speak a word.
He closed his eyes, then he turned on his heel and left her standing alone on the trampled grass, the letter she'd been dreading in her hand.
Edward had found her a husband.
And it was not just any husband, but a man Lyssa actively disliked, a petty, preening man of small tastes and small dreams who had lusted for her lands as long as she could remember.
She wanted, as she stood there in the sun pouring into the castle yard, to scream. She wanted, as the cackle of an aroused chicken rang into the still afternoon, to weep. She wanted to rage and storm and protest, and refuse, like some tragic maid of legend, to follow the orders of her king.
Instead, she let numbness blot out the screaming rage within her, and lifted her skirts, and went into the castle to begin the business of making the household ready to travel.
* * *
In the cool of the evening, Tall Mary plucked weeds from her kitchen garden. The onions needed harvesting, and the garlic. It had been a rich year, and not only for the gardens and fields. Seven women in the village carried new babes, as if to make up for the loss suffered round the shire.
A shadow fell on the bolting cabbage, and Mary looked up to find Dark Thomas standing there, his hands loose by his sides, an expression of such hopelessness on his mouth that she stood up. "God's blood, Thomas, tell me!"
His eyes, too, those glowing indigo eyes, were dull and bleak. "'Tis the foolish sorrow of a foolish man," he said, his voice gravelly. "No tragedy but one of the heart."
Mary turned away. She had no wish to hear his sorrow over Lyssa. "I have been your friend in many things, my lord, but in this you will have to make your own way." A lump stuck in her chest.
"I had thought, that once having loved her you might be kind enough to hear the loss of one who loves her now." He shrugged. "But so be it. I will find another ear."
Mary bent again, struggling to keep her heart hard. "Lyssa," she muttered. "Always Lyssa." She scowled at Thomas. "You do wear your heart on your sleeve, my lord."
Abruptly, he squatted nearby her. "Can you spare not an hour, Mary? I would have your advice."
"What advice can I offer, my lord?"
He plucked a stray blade of wheat, growing by itself at the edge of the onions. "Do you vow you will not speak of what I am to say?"
Intrigued, she braced her dusty hands on her thighs. "I do."
Idly, he twirled the wheat between his fingers, then took a breath. "I am no knight, Tall Mary. Not even as well-born as you, for my mother was a serf with no freeholdings at all."
Mary gaped at him, taking in the high brow and the broad, strong shoulders and the noble face. A peasant! Her heart gave a queer, painful twist as she thought of him laboring in the cotter's fields in a rough linen tunic, sleeping on a hay pallet, eating plain stew from a common pot.
A peasant, as she was. And if he'd come to them as such, Lyssa's eye would have flickered right over him as below her notice, and Mary herself would have won him as her husband.
As she stared at him, imagining a life wherein he was her simple husband, in a simple cottage, tears sprang to her eyes. "I'd have given you strong sons," she said.
"Aye." His gaze was sad and clear. "You would have."
But he had not come as peasant, but as knight, and that set him on a new plane. "Does she know?"
He bowed his head, and light washed over the black hair in white glossy bands. "She does."
"You told her?" Mary asked, aghast. "If she has now pushed you from her bed over that, I can give no help."
"She knew…" He looked toward the fields, and Mary felt a pang of jealousy over the way he protected the private thing between them. "… before."
"So where is the trouble, Thomas? What advice do you need from me?"
"The king has found her a husband."
"Ah." Mary sighed at the genuine sorrow in his eyes, but she still saw no reason for his appearance in her garden this night. "What can a simple peasant do to prevent that?"
"Go to her." Thomas took Mary's hand earnestly. "She will not speak with me, only bustles all through the castle, ordering folk about. Last night, I went to her and she would not open her door to me.
"You have her ear, Mary, and her heart. Go to her and listen, and then come tell me what I might do to persuade her to—"
"To marry you, sir?" she said with an edge of irony.
Painful color rose in his face. "Nay. To wait, till I make my name and my fortune, and can come back to her."
Mary took her hand from his. "Nay," she said. "That I will not do. She is torn enough by duty and love. I'll not add to it. And if you truly loved her, you would not do it, either, Thomas."
"But what joy lies in duty?"
"More than you might imagine, my lord." Mary turned from him. "Go, now, Thomas. And—" she raised her eyes to his face, so high above hers now that he, too, stood. "Be well."
With a curt nod, Thomas left her.
When he was out of sight, Mary shed her apron and changed her shoes. With a quick kiss to her father's head, she left the cottage and made her way to the castle on the hill.
Thomas loved Lyssa enough to let her go. And Mary loved Lyssa and Thomas enough to help them, if she could.
But as she made her way through the gates, John Tyler stopped her. A strapping youth from her own village, Thomas had set him upon the walls to help keep watch these many months past, and he still fancied himself a man-at-arms. "Where you off to, my pretty?" he said now.
Mary sighed and made to move past him. A sweet enough boy, but freckle-faced and gap-toothed and too gangly, he'd had a crush on her since childhood. She was in no mood for his avowals of love this night. "Let me by, Johnny. I have me an urgent errand."
"For a kiss, I'll let you by."
She scowled at him, nearly eye to eye. "What ails you?"
"Naught ails me but you, sweet Mary." He grinned impishly, showing his big white teeth. "I'll weary of waiting for you one of these days, and then you'll be sorry."
"I'm too old for you, you silly oaf!"
Earnestly, he took her arm. "Three years is not so much. And ye've not a long line of suitors willing to make you a husband."
That wounded her, and she started to push by him. "Which should show you for the fool you are."
He tightened his gr
ip, halting her. "'Tis them that are the fools. Our knight saw you for the beauty you are, did he not?"
Mary looked at him, narrowing her eyes. "What do you know of that?"
A shrug. "What all know. It matters naught to me. I've had me a maid or two in my time, by the fires of feast nights." His grin broke again, impish. "'Tis all the more we'd have to share on long winter nights, eh?"
His grin was hard to resist, and in truth, Mary had been aching so deep as she made her way here that his attention was a much-needed balm. "Will you let me by?" she said, but she asked it with a smile.
He raised a reddish brow. "Will ye give me a kiss for it?"
"Oh, aye," she said with exasperation.
To get it over with, she put her hands on his chest and leaned forward to press a peck against his mouth, but he caught her close, one hand catching her head, the other circling her waist.
"A real kiss, Mary," he said, and lowered his head.
And there in the dark shadow cast by the guard tower, Johnny Tyler kissed Tall Mary with lips as sweet as mead, coaxing from her a burst of pleasure she'd not known even with Thomas. It was a kiss to befuddle her senses, a kiss of skill and hunger, and when she stepped back, she blinked at him, finding her breath had left her entirely.
With a wicked smile that was as far from boyish as it could be, Johnny winked. "Think on me, fair Mary. I'd like me a wife, and I'd like her to be you."
Then he went off, whistling cheerfully, his new spurs clinging lightly against the stones.
* * *
Lyssa could not bear the thought of supper. She could not stomach the idea of cold ham. She also recognized the thin thread that kept her nerves from snapping entirely, and did not trust herself to sit nobly in the company of that cold knight from the king's court without giving way to screaming. Nor did she wish to see the gloating in Isobel's eyes. The girl had got her wish—Lyssa would suffer a marriage, just as Isobel would.
Thomas had come to her door twice, but she had not let him in, ignoring his voice until he went away. She feared if she allowed herself to see him, to listen to his rich, dark voice; if she saw the yearning of her own heart reflected in his eyes, she would not have the strength to do what she must.
In the morning, she would tell him he must go away.
Now alone in her chamber, with her trunk ready for the journey to her king, she curled on the wide seat of the embrasure and gazed out over her lands, her hands touching her belly, where a secret grew.
In all her time with her husband, she had never known a quickening, and had not given the matter a moment's thought when Thomas came to her. But in the past week, she had noted the changes in her body with a secret joy and trepidation. Joy that she would bear his babe; trepidation that it would be born a bastard.
And now she found that double-edged sword had sharpened.
If not for the babe, she would have gone with him—gone wherever his life lead him. She would have donned the robes of a peasant girl and gone as his whore, or a servant, or even as his sister if need be.
She would have done it, knowing the life would be hard. Done it knowing she would die young in some nameless place, with none but Thomas himself to grieve her. She would have followed him to the ends of the world, just to be with him, and breathe the same air with him at night.
But since earliest childhood, she'd been trained to put duty first, for the lives of nobles were graced with beauty earned only by virtue of serving the kingdom and keeping it whole. She'd been taught to put the needs of the land first, which meant caring for all those in her realm with as much conscience as she might muster, for the land was nothing without bodies to work it.
Duty and desire had ever been in conflict. As a young bride, she had mourned the loss of her childhood play and freedoms, as well as her secret hope of a handsome young husband with whom she might fall in love. But at the bidding of her father and her king, she had made the brilliant match, linking two families and wealthy estates.
As a young widow, faced with the choice between serving her king by fleeing the encroaching plague, or serving her village by staying to fight it, Lyssa had chosen to serve her king, leaving the villagers to fend for themselves.
In two things only had Lyssa chosen to serve her own needs. Her weaving and tapestries served the gift God had given her to find and recreate beauty.
In that there was no conflict, for with it she served something beyond herself.
Only Thomas was a selfish choice, the only thing she had done in all her life that was not done for duty. And now she must bear the price of that selfishness.
She would let Thomas, armed with the pretty manners he had so mockingly embraced, and his knightly bearing, and even his strong sword, go on to find his true life unfettered by a woman and her babe. He would never know she carried his child, nor that she ached with all she was to follow him. To give him his life, she would let him think what he wished of her choice.
The summer with him had been a rich and golden time. She had known genuine happiness, and embraced her true love, and would even bear him a child. How many women were given such riches?
Tears rolled over her face. Now, for love of Thomas, she would take this husband her king had chosen, a husband who would never know the babe she bore him early was not his own. None would ever know but Lyssa herself.
"Lyssa!" Mary's voice was strong through the door.
Hastily, Lyssa wiped her face and hurried over, opening the door to find both Mary and Alice standing there. They swept in, Alice with a tray of food, Mary bareheaded and barehanded, and looking sober. Lyssa had not the will to make them leave. She watched Alice pour ale into a silver chalice, wondering vaguely why she'd brought such finery for a simple meal.
"Drink, my lady," she said, brooking no argument.
Mary closed the heavy door and settled on a stool near Lyssa's knee. "I heard the news," she said. "Who is your new husband to be?"
"You would not know him," Lyssa said, looking into her cup, seeing the ferret-shaped face of Lord Harry. She gave an involuntary shudder and her stomach roiled. Bolting, she made it to the basin before losing the contents of her belly.
Holding hard to the table's edge, she burst into tears, trying vainly to keep her body upright against the onslaught of sorrow and fear she'd held at bay the whole afternoon.
And Mary was there, prying her fingers from the table, taking her into a deep, engulfing embrace. Lyssa buried her face in her friend's shoulder and wept. "I love him," she cried. "I cannot bear to send him away. I cannot bear to have that pig as a husband!" Waves of revulsion and sorrow welled through her, and the more she fought for control the more completely she dissolved, until not even Mary could hold her, and settled her on the bed and lay down next to her, stroking her hair, letting her cry.
At last, Lyssa grew ashamed and managed to halt her storm to a small, hiccuping aftermath, taking more comfort than she ought from the simple, repetitive movement of Mary's hand in her hair. Alice carried over a cloth soaked in cool water and put it on Lyssa's forehead, then settled on the bed beside her.
Lyssa took her hand. "Thank you. Both of you." Tears still leaked from her eyes, but she could speak at last. "I am such a fool."
"Nay," Mary said, and sat up on one elbow to touch Lyssa's cheek. "Only a woman in deepest love. In truth, my Lyssa, I did not know it went so deep for you."
Closing her eyes against the cool cloth, Lyssa said quietly, "Do you remember the day you and Isobel grew so heated and jealous and stormed out of the solar?"
Mary chuckled. "I do."
"I thought it wiser, watching you, to stay free of such passions. And here I am, scant months later, embroiled in my own. What power does he wield over us all?"
"Lyssa," Mary said urgently, "you must listen to me now."
Lyssa turned, taking the cloth from her head. "What is it?"
"'Tis not the same, for Thomas and you, as it is for the rest of us. Between you there is rare and deep love, a love that has boun
d you for all of time." She inclined her head. "I wanted that with him, but it did not happen. Not even from my side. I wanted him because he is beautiful."
"Yes," Lyssa whispered, the pain stabbing through her again as she thought of him—only this afternoon!—shedding his tunic with that teasing light in his eyes, his skin gleaming, his eyes twinkling. "He is that."
"But more, too," Alice said. "And you lit the fire in him, my lady. You made him who he is."
"Nay," Lyssa said fiercely. "He was who he was before he ever came to my realm. And he's given far more than he ever took."
Mary's smile was sweet. "There! Do you see? Do you not see, Lyssa, how you love him?"
Lyssa's head hurt. "Aye, I said as much for the whole of my storm."
Alice chuckled. "But you do not see, my lady, that you will waste away without him. You must not let him go."
"I have no choice."
"You do!" Mary cried. "Go… marry the king's choice, and let the creature wander as he will, and keep Lord Thomas here, your captain of the guards, to warm your bed when your husband roams."
"Oh, no!" Lyssa protested. "I could not. Not humiliate him that way."
Alice said, "He would ne'er take that post." She took Lyssa's hand and petted her fingers a moment, as if in deep thought. "Well you know my stakes in this, milady, and I vow to you now I speak from my heart, not my greed."
In the indigo eyes, Lyssa saw sincerity. In truth, she would trust Alice Bryony with her life. "I trust you."
"What if, milady, you go to that cousin of yours, who was so fond of you when you were a child. And tell him you claim Thomas of Roxburgh as your husband. You gave him one marriage—mayhap he would give you choice in this one."
A thread of hope leapt in Lyssa's breast. "Thomas looks like his father, does he not?" She squeezed Alice's fingers. "And the true heir was killed in the plague."
"Aye, What could be more plain? 'Tis Thomas of Roxburgh, himself." She gave a cockeyed grin. "Who is to know the difference?"
Lyssa narrowed her eyes. "What did the true heir look like? Would any know him?"
Alice frowned. "He was younger by five years. And not so sturdy as my own boy."
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