Autumn's Flame

by Denise Domning

  Elyssa leaned to the side so that she could look over her shoulder at him. Firelight gleamed golden in his hair and marked the strong lift of his cheekbones. The dimness hid his scars and turned the patch over his eye into naught but black velvet.

  His anger was gone, but so too was the emptiness that had so chilled her two days ago. Instead, amusement sparked blue lights in his eye. She caught her breath. If she'd thought him beautiful when his soul seemed dead, he was more so now.

  "You fell from a horse." It was a quiet comment, accompanied by a quick, upward quirk of his brows.

  Elyssa lifted her shoulders in tremulous acknowledgment. "Aye, and then it stepped on me." She shuddered at the memory of being trod upon by a horse, of hearing her own bone snap beneath its weight. "It broke my leg,” she finished at a whisper.

  He watched her for another quiet beat then smiled. Elyssa sighed. His teeth were even and white. Amusement caused a tiny dip in one lean cheek and set strong lines to rising from either side of his chin. It was a beguiling smile, one that tempted her to return it with her own. That smile could make her forget he now owned her child and that he'd given her this hovel as a home.

  As the heat within her grew she realized how wrong it was for them to stand here this way, her back to his front and his arms around her. They were so close she could feel the thud of his heartbeat. Or was that her own heart's pounding?

  She started to turn in his arms and was grateful when he allowed her movement. Setting her hands on his chest, she pushed free of his no longer confining embrace. Although he let her step back, he kept one hand on her hip. His touch seemed to burn through her gowns to sear her skin. She took another step from him, and his arm dropped to his side, his smile yet lingering on his lips.

  Elyssa sought safety by returning to the matter at hand. "Horses are dangerous beasts. I lay abed for months while my leg healed. I could just as well have died." She made this an earnest plea, one that begged for his understanding.

  Geoffrey FitzHenry nodded then tilted his head to one side to better consider her. "Therefore do you seek to protect your son from what you fear will hurt him. And, so many are your fears for him, you've made him into the whining babe he is."

  Elyssa huffed in outrage at his accusation. "My fears are justified. Jocelyn nearly died in his coming and only just survived his first year. Since then, he's been plagued with illness. My lord, you must heed me. He’s not like other children. Although he owns strength of intellect, his body fails him."

  "You have misjudged him, my lady." Amusement continued to tease at his mouth, keeping the corners lifted. "I see a strong and healthy boy hiding beneath the weakling he's convinced he is."

  Elyssa crossed her arms against a vicious spike of temper. "In one day's time you know him better than his mother, who has had him twelve years at her side? I don’t know why I waste my breath trying to make a man understand anything. Your sort hears only what they wish to hear. I tell you now, my lord, heed me or willfully blind yourself to the dangers that lay ready to destroy my son."

  The amusement died from his face, taking with it all life, until his features were stone once more. "My lady, I am but half-blind and then not willfully so." Although his voice was harsh, pain flowed from him until she swore it filled the tiny room. He turned on his heel and started toward the door.

  Elyssa freed a soft cry of dismay, having forgotten the patch that covered his ruined eye. Now he would return to Jocelyn and wreak vengeance for what had been unintentional on her part. She leapt forward and caught him by the arm. "Forgive my wayward tongue, my lord. Truly, I forgot your blindness."

  The sheriff turned so swiftly that it startled her into a sudden backward step. "Did you?"

  He stood before her, studying her face as if he could divine the answer to his question by his gaze alone. Unsettled by his intensity, Elyssa took another hesitant step away from him. At her movement his face relaxed, warming from stone to flesh once more. How could a mere look seem like a touch against her skin and set her pulse to racing?

  In that moment she recognized his interest in her was no longer that of warden to ward, but man to woman. Oh, but there was danger for her here. Color rose in her cheeks.

  "My lord, I think we should open the door. It’s not meet, you here with me alone." She meant this to be a strong suggestion, but it came forth as a wavering sigh.

  For some reason this made him smile, but there was more of curiosity than amusement to the curve of his lips. Although he did not move, of a sudden he seemed closer to her. Elyssa tried to step back, but the wall blocked her path. Mary save her, but he was tall. Her crown reached barely above his jawline. Both of Elyssa's husbands had been short men, her father as well, and she found his height intimidating.

  He raised his hand to lay his fingertips to her face. She stiffened, ready to resist, but when his fingers brushed softly down the curve of her cheek, there woke a wondrous tingling in her skin. Her breath caught, both in fear and longing.

  "You must not touch me so." Her attempt at strident complaint failed completely.

  His thumb moved across the roundness of her chin, then stroked her jawline. Even beneath the covering of her wimple her skin responded, warming where he touched. He must be stopped. Grabbing his wrist, she forced his hand back to his side. When she released his arm, she gave a silent prayer of thanks that he didn't reach for her again.

  Still, he watched her. His gaze touched her lips then lowered past her throat to the thrust of her breasts. Elyssa drew a shaking breath. With that simple look he made her feel as if she were disrobed before him.

  Her whole being filled with sharp awareness of the man who stood before her. Geoffrey FitzHenry was lean of form, almost too much so, but his shoulders were broad, his tunic sleeves clinging to the hard curve of his upper arms. Where her previous husbands had been old and well girdled with fat, the sheriff’s belly yet held the trimness of active youth. His legs were long and well-formed. Elyssa's gaze drifted back to his shoulders. If he were to draw her near, she could rest her head against his shoulder with ease.

  She gasped at the thought. Lean her head against him? This had gone too far already.

  Elyssa turned her gaze to the safe emptiness of the room's far corner. "My lord, this is most improper. You must go now." She cursed herself for the husky tone of desire she heard in her own voice and glanced at him, praying he hadn’t noticed.

  He had. His gaze met hers, pleasure and amusement mingling in his face.

  Nay, this could not be. She drew every ounce of her will and commanded herself to strength. "Go now." Much better. Hard and commanding.

  He reacted by stepping back from her, the pleasure ever so slowly receding from his expression. "Not until you've heard and understood what I expect of you while you reside at Crosswell."

  "Speak then. I am listening," she said, making certain her words were chipped from stone. Much, much better, especially since his presence was still feeding the twisted longing he'd wakened in her.

  At her harsh response, the remaining gentleness departed his features. Elyssa breathed a sigh of relief.

  "This have I already told your cousin," he said. "Go you no farther into the bailey than the garden gate, that place being set aside for your use. Nor do you enter Crosswelltown without my permission. Where right of law allows you to take your morning and midday meals in the hall and attend services in my chapel, do not trespass into what are the private areas of the keep."

  Elyssa stared at him in disbelief, every soft sensation he'd wakened in her now destroyed. "My lord, what you ask makes me beholden to you for my every step. Would it not be simpler to fix a chain to my leg and set me in the rooms with your other prisoners?" After ten years without a man to tell her to sit and stay, it galled her to have to submit to these rules, especially since he was no relation to her.

  For some reason, her words made him smile again. "Indeed, much easier. It’s a shame that isn't an option." He continued over her outraged gasp. "My lady,
this is not a family keep, but a garrison filled with men whose character I do not know and cannot vouch for. Moreover, the coming weeks will see keep and town fill with folk from every walk of life wishing to receive the king's justice. What I ask of you is for your own protection. Disobey me and I will confine you to this room with a guard at your door."

  She put her hands on her hips. "In here? I would die, eaten alive by the vermin that infest this place." It was a futile jab.

  He glanced around him then turned in more careful survey. "God's blood, this hovel isn't fit for swine." His voice was raised in angry surprise.

  She snorted at this. "If that is supposed to convince me you didn't know what this place was like when you set me here, you’ve failed most miserably."

  Her goad struck home for answering irritation flared in the sheriff's expression. "Do you think me so petty I would punish you in this way?"

  Elyssa looked away from him and hedged. "I think we are two people who do not care much for each other."

  "Truer words could not be spoken," he snapped. "However, not even for spite’s sake would I subject you to such a dwelling."

  "Kind of you," she murmured without much gratitude as he went to the door and lifted the bar. When he opened it, he was bathed in a sudden burst of sunlight. His hair glowed like gold, his gown turned to sapphire.

  "My lord?"

  At her call, he stopped and turned to look at her. "What is it?" he demanded in impatient question.

  "In your rules for me, you forgot to mention my son. When am I allowed to see him?" Hope welled in her as she willed him not to refuse her.

  His brow creased against what she was sure would be refusal, then his expression smoothed into what almost seemed compassion. "Madam, you make this harder for yourself than it need be. Let him go. Set your thoughts instead upon the child growing within you. Jocelyn must now leave you behind, cleaving unto his foster father."

  She trembled against the pain his words inflicted on her. "I cannot let him go. He is my child," she breathed. "How can you be so cruel? I tell you what you want from my son will be his death, and you not only ignore me, you say I must let him go with a smile upon my face. My lord, my heart is breaking. You cannot know how it hurts to have your child stolen from you as you are taking mine."

  "In that you could not be more wrong." His own heartache turned his words into a hoarse and aching whisper. The sadness on his face shot through her, speaking of a pain far deeper than her own misery. He stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

  Stunned by the depth of his soul's agony, Elyssa stared at the door. True, he'd lost his sons, one to stillbirth and another after his birth, but he still had his daughter. Once again, the ranting phrases of his dead wife's letter rose in her. There awoke in Elyssa a terrible fear that what Lord Coudray sought to conceal might be better left hidden.

  From his seat midpoint along Crosswell's high table Geoffrey glanced out at the crowded hall. The midday meal filled the big room with all those in Crosswell's employ along with travelers and those folk who owned the right to eat at the king's expense. Two long lines of tables, clothed in white linens that reached the wooden floor, stretched from either end of his table to the hall door. The flat ceiling above him kept the sound of so many folk, all slurping and chewing at the same time, trapped within these walls and it was an awesome noise.

  Suddenly, his heart longed for Coudray. Not only did that hall's high-flung rafters absorb some of the sound inherent in this close-quartered lifestyle, his home had grace and style, making life comfortable. Here, instead of plastered and painted walls, blank yellowish stones stared back at him. Without linen panels to block it, the rubble-filled walls oozed a damp mustiness into the atmosphere. This keep's only concession to the niceties of life was its chapel, and that was only because some previous sheriff sought to buy his passage to heaven by outfitting the space.

  Had this fortress been favored by the old king, it might have been better fitted. However, early in his reign Henry had sold his forest rights to feed the city's forges. In turn, Crosswelltown kept the kingdom supplied with iron products. But, without a forest, neither Henry nor any of his sons came any longer. As for Richard, Henry's son and England's present king, well, he stayed in his realm not at all, disliking both the country and his subjects.

  Geoffrey considered spending his own coin to prepare the place against the arrival of the justiciars, then discarded the notion. The swift coming and going of his predecessors suggested he might well bear the expense only to soften someone else's life. He turned his gaze back to the bread trencher before him.

  Behind his right shoulder, Jocelyn coughed quietly. Usually, a squire offered his master portions from the day's dishes and filled his lord's cup. This was an important lesson in the value of service and obedience. In Jocelyn's case, Geoffrey did not demand he serve, since the boy was not fated to be his squire. Nonetheless, it didn’t hurt the lad to stand at his better's shoulder for the duration of the meal.

  There was another cough, slightly louder this time. Irritation washed over Geoff. Their riding lesson yesterday had ended in defeat for Jocelyn. However, once the lad had finally agreed to pull on the reins, he decided to begin to cough as a secondary form of protest.

  At the high table's right end, just beyond the chaplain, there was a sudden scraping as a bench moved. Lady Elyssa rose from her place beside her cousin. Her dark red braids bounding at her hips, she walked swiftly for the hall's end and the door. So had she done the day before, leaving the hall before the meal ended once she caught the sound of Jocelyn's cough. How she could possibly hear her child over the din was a mystery that Geoffrey could only attribute to a mother's native instinct. Now, he watched as she paused at the screen guarding the room from its open door and sent a worried look at Jocelyn. Then her gaze slipped to him. Although resentment and accusation, even dislike, touched her pretty features as their gazes met, there was no revulsion.

  Wonder rose in him. She truly didn't see his scars when she looked at him. How could she do that?

  As soon as she realized he watched her in return, she moved around the screen and was gone. He looked back at his trencher as the corner of his mouth lifted in strange amusement. She was the strangest of women. His scars didn’t frighten her. Neither did Sibyl's tales of evil, nor even brute force for God knew the urge to beat her had ridden him hard the previous day. Instead, she’d nearly leapt from her skin at the brush of his hand against her face. That a woman twice married could be so fearful of a touch was a riddle begging for solution.

  The boy behind him coughed again, distracting Geoffrey from his impossible thoughts about the lad's mother. Appetite died and he pushed back from the table. Martin, seated at his employer’s left, glanced angrily over his shoulder at the boy.

  "My lord, stay and eat, while I take him. Just a day," he offered, a snarl on his lips. Geoffrey hid his grin as he heard Jocelyn sidle a little farther to his master's blind side, away from the undersheriff.

  The porter called out from the door. "My lord sheriff, a messenger comes for you."

  Geoffrey looked toward the door. A man, dressed in leather sewn with metal rings, his leggings and cloak hem mud-soaked, strode past the hearth stone at the hall's center. He paused there, waiting for a sign from the sheriff that he could approach. The flickering firelight showed Geoff who it was. Ashby had replied.

  He glanced to his undersheriff. "Martin, you may stay and finish or come with me, but my meal is at an end."

  "I'll come with you, my lord."

  Geoff turned on his bench until he could see his ward. "Sit you and eat."

  Jocelyn moved toward the bench, then halted and stared at the messenger. An instant later, his eyes narrowed and his arms rose to cross tightly over his scrawny chest. "I have to pray first."

  "The chaplain said our prayer before the meal started," Geoffrey replied evenly with a negative shake of his head.

  "That’s not the sort of prayer I am accustomed to saying," the
boy retorted. "I would kneel in the chapel and give greater thanks."

  "If yesterday's prayer was good enough for you, so is today's. Sit and eat." Geoff made this a quiet command.

  "My lord"—the chaplain leaned forward from his place next to Robert the Smith, the townsman who owned the greatest number of forges—"you shouldn't discourage such devotion in your squire. It’s a fine thing in a man."

  Geoffrey glanced at the long-faced priest who served the keep. Although Father Raymond gave him communion and heard his confessions, the priest was still half-convinced of his lord's unholy nature. Geoff's jaw tightened as he understood how this battle of Jocelyn's could have repercussions beyond just the two of them. None of it was worth fighting, not if yon messenger brought salvation from this wholly reluctant squire.

  "He may do so, but if he's not returned to the table in a few moments, you'll have to fetch him and see that he eats."

  The priest gave a brief nod. "That I shall do, my lord."

  Geoffrey rose from his bench to look down on the lad. "Go, then."

  His ward's eyes widened in insolent triumph. Without a word of thanks, since he limited the number of words he doled out to his warden, he turned and ran toward the chapel door. There was a sudden movement under the table near the townsman's feet.

  Geoff glanced down in surprise, trying to see what was rustling at the tablecloth. So did the wealthy commoner ease back on his bench to look. A dog's nose appeared from beneath the cloth, the cur that Cecilia favored, a creature as wild and masterless as his daughter. It pushed free of the linen, then trotted from one table to the next in search of scraps.

  A wave of Geoff's hand commanded the messenger to follow him upstairs, into the privacy of the sheriff's office. Martin came abreast of Geoffrey as he started toward the spiraling stairs at the corner of the room.

  "My old nurse always said the only thing worse than spoiled meat is a spoiled child," his undersheriff offered in a low voice. "If you stay your hand because of the widow, not wishing to endure her anger, I would happily beat the boy and take her rancor for it."