by Tamara Leigh
“At first, they showed themselves only fleetingly, but as the weeks passed, they became bolder and appeared for longer periods of time. They could be sweet and child-like, wild and coarse, aged and decrepit, but no matter how they presented, all were easily roused to jealousy and provoked to violence that, more than once, forced me to restrain her from hurting herself and others.”
“Go on,” Helene said softly.
“The day of the night that she brought a knife to bed, she accused me of being unfaithful and said she had seen me abed with another woman.”
At Helene’s startle, Abel turned a hand around her upper arm. “I only ever laid with her, and I have always thought it must have been one of those inside her with whom she believed I was unfaithful.”
Helene nodded for him to continue.
“I felt the knife before I saw it and, if not that my squire slept outside our chamber and heard my shout, she might have finished what she had begun. Even so, the physician said it was a miracle the blade did not sever an organ and I did not bleed to death.”
Helene waited to hear the rest of it.
“While I recovered, she escaped the tower where her father had confined her following her attack upon me, a place she had been held many times before we first met. I thought she had come to try to kill me again, and perhaps she would have had I not awakened.” His brow lined more deeply. “The light in her eyes was dim, and then it went dark and, I vow, never have I seen such vacancy upon a living person’s face. ‘Twas if all of her emptied out where she stood at the foot of the bed. Then she turned the knife on herself, and there was naught I could do to stop her.”
Helene laid her hand over his on her arm. “I am sorry.”
“Aye,” he murmured, and it was some time before he said, “Your husband?”
Despite Willem’s tragic end, her life with him seemed a better place to visit than the brief marriage of Abel and Rosamund. “He was a good man, a childless widower many years older than I and deserving of love I could not give him much beyond the love of one friend for another.”
“Why did you wed him?”
“Though Tippet was without a healer, I was an outsider. More, though, many of the women whose husbands looked too long upon me feared for their marriages. Eventually, some were so determined to see me gone that they began to spin tales that I was a witch. Fearing for my life, I decided to leave, and that is when Willem offered to grant me the protection of his good name.”
“For what purpose?”
“I would have had to be blind not to know it was more than kindness he had shown me since my arrival. But when I told him that though I cared for him, I did not love him, he said it did not matter, that he would be content with but a grain of my love if that was all I had to give.” She smiled. “And a son, if possible. By the time John was born a year later, the villagers had accepted me, and I loved Willem for loving me and our son.”
“But never more than as a friend.”
“Regrettably, never more.”
Abel’s brow creased. “Why did you wed a man you did not love when you could have moved on to another village?”
Her heart jumped. Was this the time to tell him?
Be done with it!
“I…” She struggled for words she had practiced often enough but which, in that moment, were a jumbled mess unwilling to be properly ordered.
“Of course, it could not have been safe to travel alone,” Abel helped her along in a way she could not resist grabbing hold of.
“Aye. When I left the convent, I followed the road as much as possible from the cover of the wood, the only time I set foot to it for any length of time being when a large group of merchants passed by and I was able to slip amongst them until they began to go their separate ways. Too, there was also the consideration that if I went to another village, I would be no better received.”
After a long moment, Abel said, “I understand.”
Nay, he does not—and he will not!
He drew his hand from beneath hers and set it upon her cheek. “Your feelings for me are different from what you felt for your husband.”
Was that a question? She stared down at him, holding her eyes to his lest they strayed to his mouth and she yielded to the longing to kiss him. “I fear I shall regret saying this, but I feel for you what I wish I had felt for Willem.”
His nostrils flared. “As I feel for you what I never felt for Rosamund.”
Love, then? She ached for it to be so, but if it was not, surely he cared deeply for her as he had thought he might grow to care for Rosamund—and then, perhaps, love would follow.
He slid his hand to the back of her neck, the brush of his palm’s ridged scar causing her breath to catch, then drew her down to him. When her mouth was but a moment from his, he said, “You have put me back together, Helene.”
Lord, I know You would not have me do so, but I melt…
This kiss was the same as their first. And yet not. Though the hunger she had felt then was still present, it did not ripple with the desperation of something stolen that would too soon be reclaimed by its owner and forever locked away. And when his fingers slid over her scalp and urged her nearer, she curved a hand around his shoulder, unfolded her legs, and eased down against his side.
He kissed her more deeply, stealing her breath and making her wonder if she even needed breath as long as his arms were around her. Then he turned her onto her back and lifted his head.
Helene searched his bearded face above hers that was no less dear with its angry scar. “You stopped,” she whispered.
His mouth tilted. “Should I not have?”
“You should. I but wish you did not have to.”
He brushed his lips across hers, and she gasped at the rasp of his whiskers that ought to be bothersome but was not.
“I do not believe ‘twill always be so,” he said, “but unless you grant me leave to continue, as we both know we should not, we will have to be content for now.”
For now… She reached up and, though he flinched when she touched the upper ridge of his scar, he remained still as she lightly traced it down to his jaw. “Then I shall be content.”
Smiling, he laid down beside her and wove his fingers with hers.
In the minutes that followed, Helene remained at his side in body and, more determinedly, mind, refusing to let in the voice she knew she would regret not heeding and, instead, impressing upon herself every moment that the man she loved remained warm and wholly present.
Thus, her heart sank when he said, “Though I would like to remain here with you, we should search out your plants so we will not be grossly late in welcoming Baron Lavonne.”
A quarter hour later, when she began to think her basket would not boast as much as she had hoped it would, she saw a wall of stone ahead just visible beyond the vines and grasses that crawled over it.
“Perhaps over there.” She pointed, then halted when she realized Abel was no longer at her side.
He stood rigidly behind her, gaze fixed on the place she had indicated.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shifted his jaw with such effort it was as if it had grown shut. “I know that place.”
“I do not understand—”
But an instant later she did. It was surely where he had fallen to Sir Robert’s brigands, the stone rising from the ground likely forming the entrance to the cave Lady Beatrix had spoken of some days past when Helene had sat with her at the hearth. Unlike when the brigands had stolen into Castle Soaring by way of the hidden tunnel that ran from the cave to the donjon cellar, the passageway was said to have been secured by the placement of three iron gates, each requiring a separate key to unlock. Never again would Lord D’Arci’s wife be vulnerable to any who sought to harm her.
Helene crossed to Abel’s side. “I have taken too much time as it is. Let us start back.”
As she turned away, he took her arm. “Come with me.”
She hesitated. “Are you sure yo
u wish to go there?”
“I will not give it the power to haunt me by avoiding it. Will you come?”
She peered at the place to which she might have lost him, then slid her hand into his. “I shall.”
She did not know what she expected, but certainly not a place devoid of all evidence of the butchery that was said to have befallen defenders and besiegers alike—no evidence of the blood that had seeped into the soil, nor of torn limbs and broken blades. It was gone as if it had never been, washed away by the blessed rain, and what was not washed away surely carried away by order of Lord D’Arci.
“I know ‘tis imagined,” Abel said where he halted thirty feet from the cave, “but I can smell the blood, hear the shouts and cries of those who fell and were yet falling.”
Feeling the flex of his fingers that had wielded a blade when last he was here, she looked up at him. Mouth grim, he drew her toward a massive tree that, though it yet stood, was but a brittle, rotting shell of what had surely been magnificent before pestilence had eaten through its core.
He nodded to the gnarled and humped roots that radiated out from the base like the ruined fingers of a very old man. “I thought of you as I lay bleeding. I remembered how you felt in my arms and willed myself back to before I had to leave you.” He met her gaze. “It made no sense how I could be so affected by a woman I hardly knew and with whom I had spoken so few words, but those thin memories of you kept life from slipping away.”
Helene could barely breathe. He might not have spoken the exact words, but it seemed he did love her—her, Helene of Tippet. If only that was all she was…
Abel pulled her around to stand in front of him, took the basket from the crook of her arm and set it to the ground, and turned his hands around her upper arms. “You are the reason I drew my next breath, and each one thereafter though my body warned that I would only know more pain if I did not yield to death. I fought it. For you.”
Look how far you have to fall now…
“You love me, do you not, Helene?”
That was a question, the answer to which he seemed less certain of than when he had ventured that her feelings for him were different from what she had felt for Willem. And just as it was difficult for him to believe he had so soon come to love her, neither did it make sense to her, especially if, in the end, there was no hope for her. And that possibility hurt.
All the more because you waited. Tell him, for even if what he feels for you should turn to hate, it will be far easier to bear this day than another day when you have grown accustomed to his love.
She sent up a prayer, drew a shuddering breath, and said, “There is something I must needs tell you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Abel frowned. “What is it?”
“But first”—
Tell him!
—“I must ask if ever you will be free of this place, of what happened here—more, of those who caused it to happen.”
His hands on her tightened. “You fear I will be bitter to my end days.”
Worse. “Though you say you will not allow this place to haunt you, what of Aldous and Robert Lavonne? Can you let them go—not see them when…” She swallowed. “…when your sister’s husband, Christian Lavonne, stands before you?”
Ah, Helene, you who ever seeks to be honest and open as Sister Clare trained you up to be, how you twist and wriggle out from under the truth.
“Whatever comes before hate is what I felt when I first met Baron Lavonne,” Abel said, “certain as I was he would be no different from his father or brothers and would make Gaenor’s life a misery. But in spite of the blood in his veins, I have come to see him as separate from the other Lavonnes—even respect him.”
Then there was hope.
“Of course,” he added, “he was mostly reared by the Church.”
As she had been.
“Though I can make no promises, Helene, I vow I shall strive to put away the past.”
She tried to smile, but when the expression threatened to tremble off her mouth, she let it go. “I thank you, but do you…?”
“What?”
“Aldous and Robert are dead. They can hurt no one ever again. Do you think you will be able to forgive them after some time has passed?”
Silence stacked up between them, on the other side of which she felt his struggle and what she feared was anger.
“Forgive them?” he harshly repeated.
“Aye, even if only for your sake.”
He dropped his hands from her and thrust one back through his hair. “’Tis too soon to think there. Though I know my faith asks it of me, I do not know when I will be ready—if ever—to forgive them.”
She took a step toward him. “You have to let it go, Abel.”
He turned his face sharply to her. “Just because you wish it does not mean I can forget the lives laid down by Robert Lavonne, that…misbegotten son of a wretched old man and whatever whore birthed him.”
Helene jerked back. Though she had not known her mother beyond a vague memory of sad eyes and a halo of red hair, from what she had gleaned these past years in the village, her only fault was loving Aldous Lavonne and bearing him children out of wedlock.
“How can you name Sir Robert’s mother something so hateful?” she demanded.
Confusion flickering amid anger, Abel said, “The old baron may have acknowledged his whelp and trained him up to be a knight, but all know Robert was conceived upon a woman who welcomed him into her bed without speaking vows.”
“Aye.” Helene nodded. “She was a commoner like me, a woman who loved a man who did not love her enough to wed one who was not of noble birth. In the eyes of the Church—even my own—she should not have followed her heart, but she did and, when her belly swelled beneath the hand that did not bear the ring of her children’s father, she surely endured the casting of the same vile name you have called her though you did not know her or her circumstances.”
As Abel stared her, she felt some of his anger ebb and guessed her own anger was responsible.
When finally he spoke again, his words were measured as if he yet pieced together what she had cast at his feet. “Neither did you know her, Helene. You could not have, for I was told she died before her son was even a squire—likely ere you were much more than a babe in arms.”
Refusing to flinch though the suspicion in his eyes was not far from what she had last seen in Baron Lavonne’s eyes, she said, “Regardless, you have no right to judge her merely because she was Sir Robert’s mother.”
The color that had begun to recede from Abel’s face returned. “Merely? Did that woman not raise the boy that grew into the man who stole you from your child and home, who beat you and left you to die? The same who led those who murdered a dozen of Lord D’Arci’s and the king’s men and sought to murder my sister and me?” He shook his head. “Deny it though you may and tell me ‘tis my Christian duty to forgive the unforgivable, I have good cause to disavow those who begat Robert Lavonne.”
Numbness spread through Helene. Knowing it was time and that the end would not be good, she raised her chin. “Then as you disavow my mother, you disavow me.”
A muscle in his jaw spasming, he stared at her. Then he closed his eyes as if to shut her out. “Her children’s father,” he gruffly repeated what she had unwittingly revealed a short while ago, then looked at her in a way he had never looked at her, not even when he had believed she had abandoned her son. “Robert was not the only one. That is what you wished to tell me.”
She held his gaze until his eyes drifted to her hair. “’Tis a different red.”
A dark shade of that color rather than the orange-red that had crowned her brother’s head.
Once again, he moved his jaw with great effort. “You look nothing like him.”
She loosened her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “I was too young to remember much about my mother when my father sent me away following her death, but ‘tis likely I bear a closer resemblance to her than Robert
did.”
He turned his back on her, took two strides opposite, turned, and took two larger strides that set him over her. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”
She winced at the accusation. “I feared you would send me away and I would not be able to help you regain what you lost that night.”
“You were right to fear it,” he put between his teeth.
She clenched her feet in her slippers to keep them from carrying her away. “Then you also hold me responsible for the attack on Soaring—because I am a Lavonne? For that alone?”
Something shifted in his eyes and, for a moment, she thought he might realize how wrong it was to blame her for the sins of others, but he said, “More than any woman, I have held you in high regard—believed in your honesty and who you appear to be. But only now, after I have laid myself open to you, do you reveal what you knew I would want to know.”
“I am sorry. Though I wanted to tell you, I could not.”
“Why?”
Say it. It can hurt no more than it already does.
She grabbed up fistfuls of her skirts to keep her hands from reaching to him. “Because I do love you, Abel Wulfrith. And I feared you would look at me differently…that you would not rest until you had sent me away.”
Again, something moved across his eyes, and again it disappeared. “Why did Aldous Lavonne not openly acknowledge you as he acknowledged Sir Robert?”
Longing for air that seemed in scarce supply with him so near, she dropped back a step. “He was not given the opportunity to do so.”
“He did not know you were his daughter?”
“Upon his deathbed, he knew, but at what moment he came to the realization, I cannot say.”
“What of Sir Robert?”
She shook her head.
“Baron Lavonne?”
Beneath his barrage of questions, she tensed further. “I do not know what was said between him and our father ere Aldous’s passing, but I believe the baron was given reason to suspect the truth of my birth.”
“You have not discussed it with him.”
“I have not.”
“Then how did you learn you were the old baron’s daughter?”