“What can I do to convince you—”
“—who you are?” She pounced like a cat on a mouse. “I want to see the letter.”
“The letter?”
Perhaps he feigned puzzlement, but she didn’t think so. He wasn’t as good an actor as he would like to think he was. “The letter you showed to Layamon. The one with the king’s seal on it.”
“’Strewth!” His horror made her all the more determined. “That letter’s not for you.”
“I never thought it was, but I want to see it now.”
He fumbled with the tools on his belt and mumbled excuses, but he kept the king’s letter on him—in case of trouble, the king’s seal would provide protection—and in the end he yielded.
Juliana didn’t know whether he gave in due to her indignation or to his own guilt. Once she’d read the letter, she just didn’t care. Henry’s jests were directed against her temperament—“shrewish”—and her looks—“horrific.” His advice to the solitary bridegroom ranged from the crude—“swive her till she can’t stand”—to the absurd—“seduce her.” It was a missive written by a king who had never had to mince his speech. She turned her back on Raymond. If she could, she would have mutilated the parchment, but the words burned themselves into her heart, and she couldn’t forget them.
Worse, they proved Raymond was who he finally claimed to be.
The wall where she leaned was cold stone, and she wished her heart were as hard and cold as that stone. It was not. It wept blood, it ached with betrayal.
“Juliana.” Hugh sounded hesitant as he approached, and she braced herself to look him in the face. “Juliana, what do you wish me to do?”
Hugh would be the vanguard of greater, more loathsome spectators, and, like a child who’s been disciplined by her parent yet seeks comfort from that same parent, Juliana glanced back at Raymond.
More insistent, Hugh said, “Juliana. I’ll kill him if you want, but we should first discover who he is.”
Her knees collapsed. Hugh stood before her, Raymond stood behind her, and she fell backward like some hedgerow harlot. Raymond’s hands caught her. He massaged her elbow, rubbed the rigid muscles of her back. He gave her the warmth to slow her shivering, loaned her the strength to stay erect—and Juliana hated that. She mocked her own emotions when she pretended to despise him, but she suggested, “Shall we rack him, or thrash him until he confesses his sins?”
“I suspected he was a knight and not the castle builder he claimed to be. He stands too proudly. He has the body of a fighting man. He must be a scout for someone who wants your lands or your money,” Hugh said.
Felix’s querulous voice called, “Juliana, have you been trifling with men again?”
Sir Joseph’s hideous cackle grated on her nerves, and she realized that not only her knees were collapsing. Her hope for recovery, her shy, maidenly fantasies had been shattered. Startled by Hugh’s query, Raymond was examining her from head to toe, and the humiliation formerly held at bay gripped her by the throat. She knew what he thought. She knew what he saw—a pale, gangly woman dressed in shapeless brown homespun and flaunting a red sash. A sash that pleaded for attention, that dreamed of style.
How pathetic.
No wonder he hadn’t told her his identity. He didn’t want a woman who’d been scarred by another man. He didn’t want a widow with two children. He couldn’t even understand why Hugh believed a man could want her. Raymond of Avraché was a lord of the court and—she snuck a glance at him and groaned—still as beautiful as the sunset.
“My lady—Juliana—please.”
Raymond was a nice man, too, Juliana noted, for her distress seemed to break his heart.
“I will do all I can to ease this awkwardness. Please.” His breath brushed her cheek, then a sword reached between them.
“Get your hands off her, you cretin.” The point pressed toward Raymond’s throat, and Hugh smiled unpleasantly.
She should have been grateful to Hugh, but he only stirred the night soil in the bottom of this cesspool. Wrapping her hand around the hand that held the sword, she swung it away. “Don’t be a fool, Hugh. He’s not a master castle-builder, or even a spy. He’s Raymond, Count of Avraché, come to claim his bride.”
Sir Joseph’s laughter was cut as if by a knife, and Hugh’s face mottled with rage. His sword and his hand shook under hers, and he shouted, “Raymond of Avraché?”
If there were any in the hall who hadn’t heard his name, they knew it now. Hugh turned on her like a maddened beast. “I’ll kill him for you.”
Alarmed by the bloodshot eyes that glared so furiously, she said, “Nay, you won’t.”
“Aye, kill him.”
Juliana didn’t recognize the low male voice, choked and thick with hatred, that called from beyond. Her glance grazed the assemblage, but so many emotions existed on so many faces she couldn’t tell who would incite such outrage. Felix stood beside the remains of his meal, eyes darting, head bobbing, trying to act as if he understood the situation. Sir Joseph sat gripping the table, shock bleaching his ruddy face. Sword drawn, Layamon stood between everyone and the door. Opposite him, Keir waited, tensed for action.
Who had called for Raymond’s death?
Valeska and Dagna were disappearing into the undercroft, and in the background, her servants hugged each other, smiled and sighed with relief.
Relief? she wondered. Why relief? But she had no time to discover, for Hugh gestured extravagantly, and she tightened her grip on his fingers.
“Who would know?” Hugh persisted. “We’ll tell the king he never arrived, or he died of the flux, or he hanged himself of melancholy.”
“Who would know?” she repeated, the emphasis different when she said it. Raymond stepped back, out of her vision, but she couldn’t watch him go. She could only keep her wary gaze on Hugh and wonder how this evening had so quickly turned into a farce. “Who would know? Only every dogsbody here. If a secret kept by three is no secret, what is a secret kept by thirty?”
“You were going to kill him,” Hugh accused.
“Don’t be a fool.” She rubbed her forehead. She ached as if she’d been beaten. “I would never have been able to kill him.”
“This knife—” He nudged it with his toe.
Raymond and Keir, Valeska and Dagna consulted together in a tight circle, and she wondered at Raymond’s strategy. Surely any man who could plot so devious an infiltration into the home of his betrothed would have an agenda for every occurrence.
She said, “I’m not a knight, Hugh. I’m not a man. I don’t hold life cheap, nor beat my servants to hear them cry, nor get a babe on some serving girl for fun. I wouldn’t have killed him.”
Insulted, Hugh drew himself up. “Because he’s your lover.”
“Don’t be an ass. If he were my lover, everyone would know.” She pointed. “The screen that separates my bed from the great hall allows no pleasures to go unheard, no sins to go unseen.”
Hugh’s sword dangled from his hand, a dejected symbol of his defeat. “There will be no sin when you have to wed him.”
“Wed him?”
Lowering his voice, he queried, “Surely when he announced himself you must have realized you would have to wed him.”
Oddly enough, she hadn’t realized it. With her hand at her throat and the pulsing of blood beneath her fingers, she knew the fragility of her needs, her desires, her fears.
“Don’t you feel trapped?” he taunted.
“Trapped?” She explored her emotions as she spoke. “I should, but I don’t. Maybe tomorrow, when the immensity of my error will have lodged itself in my mind. For tonight, there is only humiliation.”
“Think on it,” Hugh urged.
“Why do you delight in this?” she asked. “I thought you were my friend.”
“Your friend is not what I wish to be.” Hugh caught her shoulder and pressed it until she winced.
The blade of a sword slipped between them, and as one they followed it with t
heir gazes to its owner. Raymond stood, balanced with the casual care of a fighting man.
“Let go of her,” he said.
Hugh’s hand crept from her shoulder, and as she rubbed the bruises he’d left, she demanded, “Where did you get that sword?”
Raymond never took his eyes from Hugh, urging him away from Juliana, but he answered her. “From the king.”
“Nay, I meant”—he knew what she meant, but the castle builder had vanished, leaving an arrogant knight—“where did you store it in the castle?”
“Valeska is in charge of my armor. Dagna is in charge of Keir’s.” His gaze flashed her way, inviting her to join him in the humor. “They are our squires.”
Juliana found she had no humor tonight, nor any night. “I was not aware of swords in my castle.”
“If you had known of the swords,” Raymond said, “you would have suspected my ruse.”
What he admitted oppressed her, and she said bitterly, “Instead you perpetuated your deception without this poor tottyhead ever suspecting.”
Valeska sidled close. “Oh, you suspected, my lady. Remember when you asked me about him? I was too sly for you, but you suspected.”
“Aye, my lady.” Dagna hovered just beyond Valeska’s shoulder. “There’s no need to berate yourself when you had so many enterprising folk working against you.”
The two old ladies showed capacious grins as they jostled for positions as targets for her wrath, but Juliana was thinking too clearly for comfort. “Should I blame you, then, for my own stupidity in trusting this liar? Should I blame you for his conniving disloyalty?”
They drew back with little hisses of dismay, and Valeska croaked, “Nay, my lady, that’s not how it happened at all. He takes care of two old women who are no good to anyone. Look at him!”
“That’s true, my lady.” Dagna sang the same lyrics with a sweeter voice. “We’re from a far land with no way to get home, but he feeds us and treats us like his family. And you—you’re a kind lady who deserves a man who’ll warm your bed, give you children, keep you safe. You could travel the world over and not find a man as fine as Raymond. Look at him.”
Juliana didn’t want to look at him. She avoided looking at him. Even now, when she knew how he’d deceived her with every step, he captivated her.
“Juliana.” Raymond took her hand, threaded his fingers through hers. “Forgive me.”
She looked at Hugh, but his brief frenzy had burned out. As he stared at their twined fingers, his face portrayed loneliness, laced with a resignation only habit could provide.
“Look at Raymond,” Valeska said.
She looked at Felix, but the familiar sickness of the spirit had been distanced by new events and by a new man.
“Look at Raymond,” Dagna insisted.
She looked at Sir Joseph, pale except for two red spots that burned over his thin cheekbones. For the first time in years, his malice was directed at someone else—at Raymond. But that malice was laced with a hearty respect, and Juliana didn’t fear for Raymond.
Raymond was invincible.
“Look at Raymond,” the old ladies crooned.
One glance at him trapped Juliana in his sorcery. He stood coiled beside her, all male beauty and wicked enchantment. Like the jewelled snake of Eden, he beguiled her until she forgot the pain and humiliation a man visited upon his woman. She forgot the reasons why a woman avoided taking a lover. She forgot that men demanded more than babes, were more unreasonable than babes. She remembered only the promise of pleasure. He made her wish to seek that pleasure. Like the end of a skein of yarn, he dangled fulfillment and she wanted to chase after it.
“Ooh, my lady,” Valeska whispered, quivering with awe at the quiet passion that hummed in the air. “You’ll make fine babes for us to rock.”
“I will not!” Juliana said.
“But my lady—”
A gesture from Raymond stopped Valeska. He turned to Hugh. “Perhaps we should become acquainted. We will be neighbors.”
Hugh nodded. “But first, you wouldn’t be offended if I ask to see some proof of your identity.”
“No need, Hugh,” Juliana mocked. “My hindsight is excellent. He snuck onto my lands, prepared to abduct me, saw a perfidious way to insinuate himself into my household, and seized the opportunity. Isn’t that right, Lord Raymond?”
“Hush, Juliana,” Hugh said as Raymond withdraw a small object from the pouch on his belt and handed it over. Hugh examined it and, satisfied, pressed it into Juliana’s hand. “Your intended’s family seal. An old and famous one. Look on it well before you defy him.”
She took it between two fingers and stared at the roaring bear depicted so graphically there. “I’ve seen it before. ’Twas stamped on every message this Count of Avraché sent me, commanding my presence for my wedding.”
“Doesn’t it frighten you?” Hugh demanded.
“Should it?” It was a marvelous bit of bravado, for she had been frightened before she ever gazed at the seal.
“Have you never heard of the strain of wild fighters in Lord Avraché’s family who wear bearskins and transform themselves into berserkers?”
“That’s enough.” Raymond plucked the seal from her and dropped it into his pouch. “Those stories are naught but legends told by my ancestors to inspire panic in their enemies. Let us become acquainted now, Lord Holley, in a friendly manner.” Taking Juliana’s hand, he threaded his fingers through hers and started toward the fire.
Juliana tried to hang back, but he wouldn’t release her hand. He tugged her forward until she complained. “I must supervise the clearing up.”
“Oh, nay, my lady.” Wrinkles overcame Dagna’s face as she smiled. “We’ll do that for you. Won’t we, Valeska?”
And Valeska said, “With the help of your competent maid, Fayette, it will take no time at all.”
Raymond again tugged at Juliana’s hand. She twisted it, trying to loose her fingers until he warned, “I’ll put my arm around your waist and bring you.”
She yielded immediately, following, she thought, like some obedient ewe at the behest of the master ram. Only Raymond didn’t resemble a ram, and she was no bleating ewe. “Your penitence was brief,” she snapped.
“But sincere.” He settled her on the bench by the fire, then despaired that her feet were roasting. She replied she would rather her spine bear the brunt of the heat, and turned her back to the fire. Her features were no longer exposed by the light, but she realized her error almost at once.
Raymond faced the fire. Raymond sat next to her. By facing in a different direction, he could look at her any time he wished, and he wished to often. But he spoke to Hugh as if he were the host and Hugh the guest. “How came you to Lofts Castle now, so close to Christmastide and through the storms of winter?”
Juliana knew how hopeless her cause must be when Hugh answered with the courtesy due a lord. “I heard tales of the diggings about the castle, and couldn’t imagine such madness.”
“Such madness,” Felix echoed.
“In such weather, who brought tales of my”—Raymond sounded stern—“construction?”
“A message from—” Felix began to say, but Hugh interrupted.
“’Twas a message from a wandering troubadour, nothing more.” Leaning forward, Hugh patted Juliana’s shoulder. “And I wished to visit my old friend at Christmastide. Her wassail is the best in all of England.”
“The best in England,” Felix mimicked.
She tossed Hugh a weak smile, and fought as old memories and anxieties overwhelmed her. Her mouth quivered; she clenched her jaw to stiffen it.
But Raymond noticed, for he slipped a casual arm around the front of her waist and brought her close to him.
He didn’t speak to her—her equanimity would have shattered if he did—but his hip met her hip, and he seemed comforted by the contact. It didn’t comfort her, of course. No man’s touch could comfort her. She really wanted to squirm away. The weight of his arm made her aware of ea
ch breath she took, and she concentrated so much on maintaining a slow, even rhythm, she forgot how upset she was. She couldn’t summon any interest in the men’s tales of tournaments long over and battles long gone, but the merriment of the servants impressed her. Hailing her maidservant, she asked, “Why are the servants singing so heartily?”
“Haven’t ye noticed, m’lady?” Fayette grinned in pure delight. “Sir Joseph’s snuck right out.”
Juliana saw it was so. “He’s been absent from the great hall before, and never have I heard so much mirth.”
“Aye, m’lady, but he’s not comin’ back. Sir Joseph can’t hurt ye no more.”
Staggered by her answer, Juliana stammered, “Hurt me?”
“Did ye think we never noticed when he said those nasty things t’ ye? An’ clapperclawed ye time an’ again?” Fayette hooked her thumb in her rope belt and jutted out her lip. “Made us right angry, he did, but what could we do? He was yer chief knight.” Philanthropy forgotten, she added, “Besides, he can’t hurt us no more, either.”
“Hurt you?”
“He was always aslappin’ an’ abeatin’ on th’ servants, kinda sly-like.” Fayette rubbed her behind in remembered injury.
Juliana blushed. She knew about Sir Joseph’s rages, and she’d tried to force him to temper them, but hitherto none had complained. “I didn’t know…I had hoped he wasn’t so brutal.”
“Ach, no use in complainin’, m’lady. We knew there weren’t nothin’ ye could do t’ th’ ol’ whoreson.”
Juliana glared at the smiling maid. “I banished him.”
“Aye, that ye did, but we didn’t know if ye had th’ strength t’ force him t’ go.” Seemingly oblivious to Juliana’s indignation, Fayette beamed at Raymond. “But now—Lord Raymond, he’ll make him go. That Sir Joseph’ll have no chance against a sure-lance like Lord Raymond.”
Guilt stabbed at Juliana. She’d been so weak, so occupied with her own problems, she hadn’t even been able to control her own chief knight. Another good reason to wed Raymond. Another proof of her own ineffectiveness.
She glanced sideways at Raymond and found him watching her. Immediately her unruly emotions gained sway, and again she concentrated. She wanted no sobbing to disrupt the cadence of her breathing.
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