He then ambled back on the dais and stood directly in front of Ralph. ‘The only way to settle this, Sir Ralph, so that it can be resolved once and for all, pending the return of the silver owed to Crown is...’ he took a deep breath ‘...for you and your cousin to engage in one-to-one hand combat and bring about an end to this tournament.’
There was an audible gasp.
‘That is an inspired idea, my liege,’ said Chester, nodding at the King.
Hell’s teeth! Was this some kind of game to King Henry, who was, after all, many years younger than himself and who still probably craved the spectacle of the tournament? Yet the idea did have merit. Combat with Stephen would give Ralph an opportunity to show his prowess and give anyone who still doubted him a chance to prove himself.
‘I accept the challenge, Sire, my lords.’
‘As do I.’ Stephen stepped forward, but making sure he was as far away as possible from Ralph.
‘Very good. Then it is settled for tomorrow noon,’ the King declared as the hall began to cheer.
‘If I may, Sire?’ the Earl of Hereford interjected. ‘Surely we cannot allow Sir Ralph to leave this hall without a penalty for abusing the terms of this tournament, otherwise we would be inviting nothing but shame and ridicule?’
God, but the man was an obsequious ass.
‘Ten silver marks should surely cover that, Hereford.’ Chester frowned.
‘He already owes silver to the Crown. No, what would suffice would need to be something far more appropriate.’
Ralph stepped forward. ‘Then I would suggest that I provide alms for the monastery of your choosing, Sire, and spend a night in the dungeons here. Would that suffice, my Lord Hereford?’
‘Yes,’ the Earl sneered. ‘I suppose that would.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ralph exhaled as he looked around the small, dark, dank, foul-smelling dungeon in the underbelly of Pulverbatch Castle. He kicked up the dirty rushes on the ground as he heard the rattling of chains, turning to find a guard coming through the narrow passage beyond the arched doorway inserted with thick metal bars, carrying a lit torch. Then Ralph saw her behind the man... Gwen.
She was here in this awful place to see him. His chest tightened just as she finally came into view, on the other side of the metal bars.
‘Gwen? What are you doing here, my lady? This is no place for you.’
She stepped forward and nodded at the guard who passed her the torch. ‘You can have only a moment, Lady Gwenllian,’ the guard said, before moving to walk outside the narrow hallway.
Gwen turned back to face Ralph on the other side of the metal bars. ‘I had to see you, Ralph. To make sure that you were well.’
‘I am better for seeing you.’ Ralph slipped his fingers through the gap and smiled. ‘Thank you for coming to the hall earlier today. Without your testimony, I very much doubt that I would have convinced those men of my true identity.’
‘It was the least I could do to lend my support in my own small way.’ She reached out and laced her fingers with his.
He shook his head. ‘You must know that it was far, far more than that, Gwen. I am once again indebted to you.’
‘No, you are not.’ Her lips curled upwards faintly. ‘But I did come here to say that I am so proud of you, Ralph de Kinnerton. You handled the situation with a lot of courage in front of King Henry and the Marcher Earls.’
‘I am not so sure about that.’ He shrugged. ‘But I shall need all the courage I can muster tomorrow with Stephen.’
Her brows furrowed in the middle. ‘And must you fight him?’
‘I’m afraid there is no other way to prove my worth to those men.’
‘But this is Stephen le Gros we are discussing,’ she hissed. ‘The man has no honour and would stoop to any lengths to gain advantage.’
‘Trust me, I shall be ready for him.’ He smiled briefly, touched at her concern. ‘There is really no need to worry, Gwen.’
‘That is going to be difficult to do under the circumstances.’ She sank her teeth into her lower lip. ‘I have something for you—a token that I hope will bring you luck tomorrow.’
Gwen pulled out the length of material from her drawstring pouch, which she draped over her arm, the richness in the embroidery gleaming in the dappled light from the torch. Ralph could see that it was the token Gwen had given him before the mêlée à pied.
‘Where did you find it?’ he said in surprise, gliding his fingers across the length that she held out. ‘I believed that I had lost it after the disastrous mêlée à cheval.’
‘I confess that it had not been easy to find as it had been embedded into the mud after the mêlée. But Brida and I found it after a thorough search of the area.’
‘And then laundered and brought it back to its former beautiful state, from what I can see.’
‘With an extra addition down the centre, if you take a closer look.’
Ralph blinked, running a finger down the centre, and realised there had been an additional piece of fabric that had been carefully stitched on. He knew instantly where the material had come from.
It was the first token Ralph had ever received from Gwen. It was the only item in his possession that he knew held some significance when he woke after being ambushed in St Jean de Cole. So much so that he wore it constantly around his wrist until it had become worn and weatherbeaten. It was the blue and purple strip of material he had churlishly returned back to her that first time he had spotted her, after years apart, on the eve of the tournament sitting in the royal spectator area.
‘I cannot believe you kept it.’
His fingers grazed over the softly textured material. ‘It’s strange, but those first few days after I woke from the ambush in St Jean de Cole, it was this piece of fabric that kept me going, in the midst of my confused mind. I somehow knew it was a link to the past. To you.’
She swallowed as she nodded. ‘Well, I hope now that the new and old pieces have come together, it would also serve as a token for tomorrow. And also the future. Your future.’
‘It shall.’ He squeezed her fingers gently, taking her beautiful token. ‘I thank you for your kindness, my lady. It means a great deal.’
‘It is nothing, I assure you.’
‘Yet, for me, I am assured that it’s everything and more.’ He smiled softly, looking over the token. ‘I’m glad that you did not throw away the original token you gifted me.’
‘I very nearly did, when I believed you to be dead and with your friend Sir Thomas seemingly presenting it back to me. But then I realised that I could not do that, Ralph.’
‘After the way in which it was returned, I would not have blamed you if you had.’
‘How could I?’ She sighed. ‘For me, it was also a link back to you.’
He lifted her hand through the bars and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. ‘Forgive my initial reaction, Gwen. I was frustrated, angry and carried a lot of hurt from that time.’
‘Due to my decision not to run away with you six years ago?’
He nodded. ‘Indeed. You deliberately wanted me to think the worst of you.’
She swallowed uncomfortably. ‘I suppose I’m quite persuasive, when I have to be.’
‘True, and it certainly worked—I believed that about you, all those intervening years. Yet in reality you did what you did to help me get away.’
‘Yes.’
‘To protect me by giving me more time to do so?’
‘Indeed.’ Gwen untangled her hand from his and took a step back. ‘It’s getting late. I must be going.’
‘Wait, a moment longer, Gwen.’ Ralph ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Please do not go yet. However painful it is, I hope you know that you can tell me anything. Let us not have what happened six years ago still stand between us.’
‘This is hardly the t
ime.’ She turned her back on him. ‘Can we not discuss this after your combat with Stephen tomorrow?’
‘I may not have another chance. Besides, do you not believe that I have waited long enough to know what happened between you and Stephen? Ever since I’ve been reunited with you, this has gone round and round in my head, as I pondered on the nature of the promises you were forced to make to him back then.’
‘This is not what I wish to discuss, rather something I prefer to forget, Ralph.’
‘I can imagine, sweetheart.’ He walked to the bars, studying her and noting the stiffness to her body. ‘I realise that your decisions back then were not only difficult, but what you believed to be right.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It was the only way I could assure your safety, otherwise, he would have hunted you down, as I explained before.’
He realised then the stark reality of what Gwen had believed to be true and his heart twisted in anguish for the decisions she had had to make.
‘And as I said, I am grateful for what you did, Gwen. You are truly a remarkable woman.’ Ralph exhaled. ‘However, there is one thing I would like to know. I need to know what you had to do for that assurance.’
Ralph wondered whether she would actually tell him and, just when he believed that her silence would not break, she finally spoke.
‘The first thing I did was to convince you, Ralph, of my indifference to you, which was actually much harder than I initially believed. However, the expediency for you to get away played its part and eventually you were forced to leave Kinnerton without me.’ She took in a deep, shaky breath before continuing. ‘In truth, I was relieved that you left, otherwise Stephen claimed that he would have killed you in front of me which I believed he would have. However, as always with Stephen there was so much more that he sought.’
‘Go on.’
‘Must I, Ralph?’
‘I would like to know what happened so that I can understand the past better. So that I can understand you.’ And the hard choices Gwen had made.
Ralph hated having to ask her of this, knowing how difficult Gwen found talking about that awful time in their shared past, but he had to know exactly what happened. Only then could he be of any help to her.
‘He...he brought shame on me, Ralph, insisting that I would soon have to marry him, anyway, so he...oh, Lord, this is so difficult to say. He touched me. He despoiled me and he would have done more had we not been interrupted. Had he not been called away with the need to quash certain factions of Kinnerton men who still supported your father...or rather you.’
He drew breath slowly through his teeth as he grappled with what she was finally telling him, but there was more as she continued.
‘Then he marked me, here at the base of my neck.’ Her voice was filled with a slight tremor, as she turned her head and swept her veil and the hair beneath on to one shoulder, exposing the back of her neck. She rubbed her fingers down from her hairline. ‘It’s quite faint now, but he...he used a dagger to mark his initial into my skin, in the hope that I would never forget to whom I belonged—as he reminded me,’ she said sadly.
There was a dull ringing in Ralph’s head and his stomach twisted in a knotted coil of cold fury and a certain feeling of helplessness for all that Gwen had gone through. God, but had he not expected something like this? He had predicted that there was something missing from what she had said, yet this was far more and far more depraved than he had ever imagined.
Now for it to be finally voiced made Ralph’s blood roar with rage to think that Stephen le Gros had touched Gwenllian, the loveliest, kindest and most caring woman he knew and against her wishes, with sullied hands that could only belong to someone as foul as his cousin.
And what made this all so much worse for Ralph was that it had all happened while he had thought the worst of Gwen and her reasons for not running away with him. For six long years, he had believed that she had somehow put her ambitions for wanting to become the next Lady de Kinnerton above anything else. And while she had been put through that dreadful ordeal, at the hands of his cousin, Ralph had run away like a worthless coward.
God’s breath!
The shame he felt for not protecting Gwen when she had needed him threatened to consume him. Lord only knew how much when he had failed her so utterly and completely.
‘Ralph?’ Her soft voice pierced through his morose musings. ‘Won’t you say something?’
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded shaky even to his own ears. ‘But let me say that no words can truly convey the regret and outrage I feel for what happened to you, Gwen.’
‘It was not your fault, Ralph.’
‘Was it not?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘But I hope that what I have recounted here explains the difficult choices I was forced to make. And ones I must continue to make after this tournament draws to a close.’
Yes, he did. He had foreseen that there was a lot more to the path that Gwen had chosen and his assumptions were sadly correct. Her desire to take the veil now took on a huge significance that made him want to weep at her feet for all that she had endured. And in truth, if he had been listening closely, mayhap he would have understood her difficulties better, despite the fact that he had pushed Gwen to relive that painful moment from the past again. Yet there was more from the manner in which she had spoken. Gwen had not just disclosed this to explain the shame, guilt and pain she felt about what had happened resulting in her decision to enter a holy order. But because she was also telling him that there could never be anything between them. Had she not been saying this all along? That their love was not enough to overcome the past.
Damn Stephen le Gros to hell.
All of it had begun and ended with the bastard.
The guard emerged again from the narrow passage outside to take her away from this gloomy, damp place. Just as well, since Ralph could not presently look at her knowing how much he had let her down. How much he felt the blame of what had happened.
He heard Gwen step away to leave when he turned to her once again.
‘I must go now. Until tomorrow, Ralph, try to manage to gain some rest.’ Her voice was now dull, void of any emotion. So much so, that he wanted to reach out to her.
‘I am sorry, Gwen. I should have protected you better against a man like Stephen.’
‘As I said, it was not your fault.’ She shook her head, giving him a sad smile. ‘How could it be?’
Very easily.
Ralph waited until she had gone before he pounded his fist against the stone wall again and again, welcoming the sharp pain as the cold jagged edges of the wall grazed and cut his hand. He sank on to the floor and covered his head with his hands, feeling the enormity of what Gwen had just divulged. She might not believe that he was to blame, but he felt the responsibility for what had happened to her all the more. He felt it keenly, knowing that she had done it...yes, to protect him.
Hell’s teeth, that took on a very new and dark meaning now.
And yet Ralph knew whose fault it actually was. Who was to blame for all their misfortune. His cousin—Stephen le Gros.
As Ralph sat there on that filthy floor, he made a vow to himself that he would never allow anything like this to happen again. As God was his witness, he would rather die, than allow anyone to harm even a hair on Gwenllian ferch Hywel. The impending one-to-one combat with Stephen on the morrow suddenly took on a far more ominous stance, but it could not come soon enough.
Yes, everything had begun and ended with his cousin and tomorrow Ralph had a moment with destiny, to end it once and for all.
* * *
Gwen left the horrible cavernous dungeons close to tears, but she would not allow them to fall. No, she would hold her head high, meet with Brida outside the dungeons and make their way back to the keep. Only once she was back in the privacy of her chamber would she then give in to those tears.
She had always known deep in her heart what Ralph’s reaction would be, once he was made aware of the truth about that terrible time, all those years ago. And she had not been wrong since he could hardly hide his bitterness, anger and even disappointment. Ralph could barely look at her once she had informed him, the sudden difference in him so very tangible.
Mayhap in time it would even alter the way in which he viewed her and Gwen would not be able to live with that. No, she did not want to see resentment and eventually disgust masked on Ralph’s face. His vile cousin would constantly be between them. It would never do. A future between them would always be doomed.
She stepped out into the night and took a deep breath, allowing the clean, crisp air to replace the putrid smell from the dungeons.
‘Is everything well, Lady Gwenllian?’ Brida stood outside the underground opening, waiting for her.
No, nothing would ever be well again. ‘Yes, I suppose, all things considering.’
‘Sir Thomas is here to provide escort.’ Her companion flushed a little as she nodded in the direction of Ralph’s handsome friend.
‘Indeed, my lady.’ Sir Thomas Lovent bowed before walking to her side. ‘Ralph ensured that while he might be ensconced inside a cell, you would still need protection from his cousin, should the man want to seek retribution for your part in the hall earlier.’
‘Yes, you were very brave, Gwen.’
It would be her one last act in helping Ralph before she set off on her journey to the convent. A journey that Gwen realised she would now have to make without Ralph’s escort. Mayhap she had always known deep down that it would be too much of a struggle for them both to travel together. That their intense attraction would always be an impediment to what needed to be done. To go their separate ways. Well, there was nothing for it. She would inform Brida of the changes to their plans. They would now get away after Ralph’s one-to-one combat with his cousin on the morrow, whatever happened.
Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 68