A Knight to Remember (8 page)

The mist on the leaves sounded like laughter.

“Providence?” Wharton snorted. “Th’ hand of th’ devil, more likely.”

Wharton’s insistence incensed Hugh, and he responded in the manner most likely to silence him. “I do not understand why you, a man of war, speak so slightingly of a mere woman. One would almost suppose she had won a victory over you.”

“’Tis not true! Did she say so?”

Wharton’s quick reply told Hugh much, yet as he stepped into the deepest shadow beneath the tree, he knew he could not allow Wharton to continue to speak of Edlyn with such disrespect. In spite of the dark, Hugh turned and looked at the faithful Wharton to impress him with his displeasure. “Who she is and what she has done to you is of no interest to me. All I care is that my manservant will treat my wife with the respect due her. You, Wharton, seem unable to comprehend this, despite my repeated warnings. Perhaps it would be better if I found another servant.”

“Master!” Wharton must have dropped to his knees, for his voice slithered downward. “Ye wouldn’t leave me?”

“Not willingly.” Hugh stepped forward so he loomed above Wharton. “So I will have your sworn word you will protect and defend Lady Edlyn as you do me.”

“Master…”

Hugh didn’t care for the whine in Wharton’s voice, and he stepped back.

“Master!” Wharton crawled forward. “I swear, I swear.”

“On what shall I have you swear?” Hugh wondered. He knew his manservant, and not much impressed Wharton as holy.

“On a cross?”

“I think not.”

“In th’ church?”

“Not effective enough.”

“On yer sword?”

“We’re getting close.” Hugh stuck out his closed fist. “On me. Put your hand over mine, Wharton, and swear fealty to Lady Edlyn on my life.”

Wharton’s hand trembled. His voice trembled. But he swore while kneeling in the mud beneath the oak.

“Once again, Wharton, you show your wisdom.” His man stood, subdued and obedient, as he should be, and Hugh leaned wearily on his shoulder and turned back to the dispensary. “Let us make our plans to capture the elusive Lady Edlyn.”

Edlyn squinted into the morning sun as she scanned the open road for travelers. Specifically, for a monk and two boy-children trudging at his side. But the rutted, narrow track remained empty, and she turned toward the dispensary with a sigh.

When the monk had suggested he take Allyn and Parkin on a short pilgrimage, she’d been enthusiastic. The task of tending two tireless eight-year-olds in an abbey stretched her imagination and her resources, and she looked forward to the peace of solitude. And she freely admitted she had enjoyed it. She also missed her sons more than she ever thought possible, and she wanted them back.

Putting her hand on the gate to the herb garden, she hesitated to open it. Before her lads came home, though, she wanted Wharton and his wretched master gone. She hadn’t slept well last night because of Hugh. Because of his kisses. She worried that she’d hurt him too much, then she wished that she’d struck twice as hard. The scoundrel. He had been insulted when she thought he would take advantage of her lowly state to make her his mistress rather than wed her, then he had taken advantage of her weaker muscles to kiss her!

Why that even rankled, she didn’t know. She’d had enough experience with men to have taken their measure. Nevertheless, she’d slept too long and missed Mass, and Lady Blanche had glared when they’d met in the square.

Shutting the gate behind her, she turned—and gasped. Hugh rose out of the patch of thyme, his long legs steady. “What are you doing up?” she demanded. She hurried between the paths, her feet crushing the herb. Then she saw the ruddy color in his face. Clearly, his energy the day before had been no fluke. He was well, or soon to be. She slowed. “Get out of the beds, you fool, you’re crushing the plants.”

He rebuked her, his voice slow and measured. “That is no way to greet your betrothed.”

“We are not betrothed.”

“Then let us go now and remedy that state.”

She cocked her head and examined him. The ragged growth of his beard had been shaved clean, baring the lines of his cheeks and chin. He wore clothing, not the robe she’d confiscated for him. Hose and boots and a knee-length tunic with laced-in sleeves. They fit him and were of fine workmanship, a further indication of his success. She found her mouth set in petulant lines and tried to smooth them from her face. After all, why should it matter to her if he’d won a title and the lands he’d always longed for? She, more than anyone, understood how temporary were the trappings of wealth.

“Will you not go to the church and have them read the banns?”

He said it as if it were her last chance to do as he wished. If he were giving up his pursuit, that should surely please her, but somehow she expected more tenacity from Hugh. “You are a warrior. I have no wish to be betrothed to you.”

He moved so quickly she had no time to run, and she found herself wrapped in his arms. It reminded her of yesterday and made her angry all over again. “I didn’t expect to see you standing so soon after that blow I gave you.” A slight shudder shook him, and that satisfied her need for respect.

But he said, “I never underestimate my opponents twice.”

A warning, and she took it as such. “I never use the same tactics twice.”

He inclined his head. “I will remember. My thanks for telling me.”

Stupid
, she railed at herself. As if he needed help with his schemes.

He quelled her attempt to withdraw. “You left too quickly yesterday.”

“Not quickly enough, I’d say,” she answered.

“I would have shown you more.” He pressed a tender kiss on her forehead.

“You showed me quite enough.” She tried to slither down out of his grip, desperate to get away, to get him inside. The high stone wall around the garden might shield them from watching eyes, but anyone could walk through the gate.…

He followed her down. She’d sprouted these plants through the late winter, cherishing them through the last cool nights until they could be placed in the ground, and now this big oaf wanted to roll in them. “Let me up,” she said. “It’s muddy.”

“It rained last night.”

“I know that!” Did men take instruction to be aggravating, or was it bred into them? “And it smells like a stew down here.”

“Um.” He lay on his back and drew her over him. “The stew of love.”

She couldn’t help it; she half laughed at his poor analogy. “You’ll never be a poet.”

“I’ll never be a lot of things, but I
will
be your lover, my lady.” He pushed off her wimple. “And soon.”

It was getting to be annoying, his habit of removing her hair covering, and she snatched at it. He tossed it away and went to work on her braid. She was still irate about the night before, but she had to work to maintain her animosity. He seemed different this morning, pleased with himself and frolicking in the sunshine.

In the sunshine. “We have to go inside,” she said. “Someone may come by and see you.”

“Um.” He buried his face in a handful of her hair.

“Hugh, please.”

He blew the strands away. “I like it when you beg me.”

“Then I beg you. Let us go in. I’ll help you.”

“I don’t need help. I’m almost well.”

“Aye,” she said doubtfully. She didn’t know how that was possible, but she couldn’t send him on his way just yet. “The nursing nuns come first thing for their medications, you know that, and—”

Catching her chin, he brought her face down to his and kissed her. It wasn’t the nice kiss of the night before, but a bruising kiss, oddly forceful and not in the spirit of playfulness he had previously displayed.

When he let her raise her head, she touched her lips. “What did you do that for? It hurt!”

He didn’t answer but stared at her. “Your mouth is swollen.”

“I would suppose!” She didn’t like his expression; triumph mixed with a rather attentive regard.

Then he rolled her onto her back, one way and then the other. First the straw on the path stuck through her clothing, then her shoulders and hips mashed the small thyme plants and sank into the damp earth. “Have you gone mad? What is wrong—” She heard voices outside the wall, and they were moving this way. “Listen!” He grabbed at her waving hands. “We’ve got to get you to your feet.”

He held her when she would have scrambled up. Just held her.

“Hugh.” She tried to extract her fists. “Hugh, you—”

Wharton’s voice suddenly boomed out. “There they are!”

And Lady Blanche said, “I told you, Lady Corliss!”

Still held tight against Hugh, Edlyn twisted
around. A great mass of eyes stared at her in shock, horror, and ill-concealed glee from the garden gate. Half the nuns. Some of the monks. Lady Blanche and Wharton. Baron Sadynton. And the abbess, who stood fingering her beads.

“
I did nothing wrong
.” Edlyn sat on a bench in the middle of the square and repeated what she’d said many times since this mockery of an inquisition had begun. Every nun in the abbey, every monk in the monastery, every servant, every peasant, and every patient who could hobble stood assembled in a circle around Edlyn and her accusers, and Edlyn imagined the circle was closing.

“Then why do you have mud and straw and green marks on your back?” Lady Blanche looked around, her mouth pinched in triumphant disapproval. “That looks like evidence of wrong to me.”

“Because he”—Edlyn pointed at the decorous Hugh sitting across from her—“tried to make it look as if we’d been fornicating in the dirt, that’s why. But I tell you, we haven’t!”

Lady Corliss sat in the high-backed, cushioned chair that the servants had brought from her room. The abbot stood at her shoulder, lending his authority to the proceedings and his advice should Lady Corliss ask for it. She didn’t. She said nothing. Not that she believed Edlyn, not that she didn’t; just nothing. She let
Lady Blanche and her wretched servant weave tales of Edlyn’s misbehavior without changing expression.

Lady Blanche giggled, high and long. “Why would this man go to such lengths to ruin your reputation?”

It was going to sound stupid, but Edlyn had sworn to tell the truth. “Because he wants to wed me.”

From the front of the circle, Baron Sadynton called, “Why would he buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free?”

A gust of jeering laughter from the crowd almost blew Edlyn off her bench, and she struggled with her mortification. She hated the lord. She’d deprived him of his syrup of poppies, and now he took his revenge, relishing it.

A group of men—warriors, for Edlyn recognized the breed—stood back and to one side, watching the proceedings wrapped in a grim, intent silence. Had word spread across the countryside that entertainment was to be had at Eastbury Abbey? Was she to be so disgraced that all of England knew of it? Had she done so badly here that no one would speak for her?

Hugh rose to his feet, and the group of strange men moved closer. “I have begged Lady Edlyn to marry me, and what she says is true. We have never known each other as man and wife. Always have I honored her.”

Was his measured testimony supposed to remedy her anguish? He’d destroyed the new life she’d worked to build from the ashes of the old. He’d deliberately put her in the position of having to depend on him, a man and a warrior, to rescue her.

“Who are you?” Lady Blanche asked. “How did you come to our abbey?”

“I was wounded, and the battle still raged. My men fought valiantly still, so my servant brought me.” Hugh pointed at Wharton.

Why didn’t anyone ask why Wharton had led her pack of accusers to find her in Hugh’s arms? No one jeered Hugh. They all respected him—because if they didn’t, he had the ability to thrash them. They respected him because he had dishonored her and was still willing to marry her. She’d always known life wasn’t fair, but right now, the inequity of it struck her across the face.

Hugh continued. “Fearing for my life, he hid me in the dispensary and forced Lady Edlyn to keep silent and care for me.”

“How could he make her keep silent?” Apparently, Lady Blanche wasn’t afraid of him, for she smirked at him in disbelief.

Hugh looked at her. Just looked at her.

Until she grew afraid. Until she developed the same frightened respect the others afforded him.

Then he said, “Wharton, tell the lady what you did to Lady Edlyn.”

Wharton stepped out of the crowd and into the focus of attention. For the first time since Edlyn had met him, gone was his bravado. As she glared at him, he shuddered as if she’d given him elderberry to clear his bowels. “I held a dagger t’ her throat.”

“While she remained in the dispensary,” Lady Blanche chirped. She might have momentarily let Hugh intimidate her, but she had no such compunction about Wharton. “But when she left the dispensary, she could have told one of us.”

“I woulda hunted her down an’ killed her.”

Lady Blanche tittered. “As if she believed that.”

Wharton swung his head toward her and bared his black and broken teeth until Lady Blanche lost both color and audacity.

Edlyn experienced a flush of exultation, then one of
the monks stepped out from the crowd and she sagged. Brother Irving, the monk in charge of the guest quarters, cast a sorrowful glance at her and waited until Lady Corliss nodded permission at him to speak. In a gentle voice, he said, “Lady Edlyn has been sneaking out at night.”

No one said a word, but all gazes turned back to her. The group of strange men exchanged glances, and Edlyn held on to the bench with both hands. She would not leap to her own defense. She would not.

“Where has she been going?” Lady Corliss asked.

“I worried about her, so I followed her,” Brother Irving said. “She went to the dispensary.”

Edlyn lost her struggle to maintain some dignity and bounded to her feet. “I only went when Wharton came and got me. Four nights! And why didn’t you say you were awake?”

Brother Irving cleared his throat. “I am not of noble blood, my lady. My father’s a baron, and I dare not speak out of place.”

Edlyn intercepted a disgusted look from Lady Corliss. She knew Brother Irving would be replaced as doorkeeper.

“Adda has something to say, too.” Lady Blanche pulled her stepsister out of the crowd. “Don’t you, Adda?”

Adda jerked her arm out of Lady Blanche’s hold. Sullen lines marked her face. “Nay. I have nothing to say.”

“What do you mean?” Lady Blanche cried. “Don’t you want to tell them how Lady Edlyn lied to you about the blood on her apron?”

“Nay.”

“What about the things you saw when you spied in the window of the dispensary?” Lady Blanche peered
into Adda’s face. “Tell them about how Lady Edlyn held the man in her arms and gave him comfort.”

“He was unconscious.” Adda glared at Lady Blanche. “He didn’t even know.”

They’d been fighting again, Edlyn realized. Adda’s resentment for Lady Blanche occasionally bubbled over into the daily dealings of their lives. When Lady Blanche proved too querulous or demanded too much, Adda stubbornly refused to cooperate and a kind of war ensued.

“You saw them kissing one day.” Lady Blanche leaned forward and shook her finger in Adda’s face. “Tell them. Tell them, I say!”

“You made me stay out in the rain to spy on them.” Adda’s voice rose. “I’m not telling anything!”

Lady Blanche reached out and grabbed Adda’s wimple and a handful of hair and jerked. Adda went down on her knees with the pain, then twisted around and bit Lady Blanche on the leg. Lady Blanche fell. The crowd closed in, shouting encouragement as if they were fighting dogs.

Edlyn again thanked God for helping her make the decision she’d made eight years ago. It was the right one, she knew.

Lady Corliss didn’t say a word; she just walked over to the two older, dumpling-shaped women and stood above them. With last-minute hissing, the women halted their combat. Lady Blanche tried to stand and stumbled on her own hem, and Adda laughed nastily.

“She started it,” Lady Blanche said. “You saw that, surely.”

Lady Corliss remained quiet.

“You’re better to your laying hens than you are to me.” Adda got to her feet in slow stages.

“My laying hens are valuable,” Lady Blanche retorted. “Which is more than I can say about you.”

Lifting her hand for silence, Lady Corliss waited until the two women fixed their attention on her. “It would be better if you were separated until Saint Swithin’s Day.”

Betrayed into insolence, Lady Blanche said, “You can’t do that. Who will care for me?”

“You’ll both spend the time in isolation and in fasting,” Lady Corliss answered. “Neither of you will want for anything, for there is nothing you will be permitted to want.”

If ever Edlyn had wanted her revenge for the slights and insults, she had it now. The cherries in Lady Blanche’s cheeks faded as she thought of the days of loneliness and hunger she faced. And Adda, who showed an inbred skill for nosiness, looked only slightly less dismayed.

“For the rest of you,” Lady Corliss spoke to the crowd, “there are chores to be done and patients to be served. Please tend to your duties.” Every person there bulged with curiosity, but she conceded little when she said, “I will handle this matter alone.”

Abbot John stepped forward and spoke in her ear. She answered in equally low tones. He nodded, then turned to the crowd. “Didn’t you hear Lady Corliss? Disperse at once.”

They grumbled and glanced back longingly, but they did as they were told. All except the warriors, who moved to one side and waited.

Abbot John stared pointedly at them. “Well?”

Who were they? Edlyn didn’t like the way they seemed to be of one mind. And when they responded to an unseen signal and moved suddenly out of the square, she liked it even less. They were like birds who
flew in formation behind their leader and swerved when he swerved.

She glanced around. But who was their leader?

Abbot John seemed not at all concerned. Probably he’d already inquired about their purpose, and for that reason Edlyn quieted her curiosity. After all, she had more pressing problems than the rumors these travelers would carry with them.

“You two,” Abbot John said, indicating his own personal manservants, “carry Lady Corliss’s chair inside.”

Moving swiftly, the servants obeyed, leaving Edlyn, Hugh, Wharton, and Lady Corliss alone in the square.

With a graceful wave of the hand, Lady Corliss summoned both Edlyn and Hugh, and without waiting to see if they followed, she proceeded toward her office inside the church.

Edlyn hesitated only an instant, then walked after Lady Corliss. She heard Hugh speak to Wharton, telling him to meet the men and go back to the tent, and she wondered briefly at that. What tent? When had he acquired a tent and for what purpose?

Then she stifled her inquisitiveness. She didn’t care anything about Hugh. If he had a tent, perhaps that meant he would pack it up and leave.

Gathering a handful of her skirt in her hand, she lifted it to climb the church steps. She squeezed the material into a wad of damp wool and thought,
Hugh leave
? If only she would be that lucky.

His boots sounded behind her, the expensive leather soles thumping on the stone, and she half hoped he would try to take her arm. Not because she needed the assistance, but because she wanted to ram her elbow right into his stomach.

He didn’t touch her.

The quiet of the church only fractionally calmed her turmoil. No matter how Lady Corliss decided this case, Edlyn knew a great change had ripped her life apart. As Lady Corliss seated herself behind the rough-hewn table, Edlyn slipped into one of the chairs opposite and tried to take comfort in the fact she belonged here. Hugh did not.

But when he sat in the other chair, she could discern no discomfort in his expression or his pose. The wretched man was at ease anywhere, and that provided her with one more reason to dislike him.

From the way Lady Corliss gazed at him, Edlyn thought perhaps she didn’t like him either. “Who are you?” Lady Corliss asked.

“My name is Hugh de Florisoun,” he answered readily enough. “I have won a barony and an earldom, with lands enough to support a wife and family, and therefore I beg you for the hand of Lady Edlyn.”

He was so smug, sitting there protected by his wealth and his titles, that Edlyn couldn’t bear to look at him. With her gaze fixed rigidly on Lady Corliss, Edlyn snapped, “She doesn’t have the right to give my hand in marriage.”

“Lady Edlyn is right.” Lady Corliss sat straight in her chair, her spine not touching the back.

“Did she not, when coming to live in the abbey, vow to obey your dictates?”

How had he known that? Edlyn shot him a glare and saw him relax with a smile. He
hadn’t
known it. Not until she’d confirmed it with her fulminating glance. She had better learn to watch herself around him, or her life with him would be—

Nay. The battle wasn’t over yet. She wouldn’t admit defeat so soon.

“What her vow means, my lord, is that Lady
Edlyn must obey my dictates or be thrown from the abbey. It does not mean I have the right to give her hand in marriage.”

“Only that should you command her to and she refuses, she will have to leave.” Hugh nodded in satisfaction. “I see.”

“That is why I have brought you here to speak to me in private.” Lady Corliss obviously disapproved of his confidence. “To see if it’s necessary to take such a drastic measure.”

“She is compromised,” he said implacably.

“I will do what I believe to be the will of the Lord God. It is He whom we must please this day, Lord Hugh, not you and not convention.”

Clearly thunderstruck, Hugh watched Lady Corliss from beneath lowered brows. Without a doubt, he had believed he had enforced his will, and he hadn’t expected to hear that the situation remained in God’s hands.

Mollified by his silence, Lady Corliss said, “Lady Edlyn, tell me everything that has happened starting with the moment you found Lord Hugh in the dispensary.”

Edlyn obliged. From the moment she’d seen the broken lock to this morning when she’d been discovered rolling in the dirt with Hugh, she told everything.

Well, not quite everything. She didn’t tell about the dragon’s blood and how she’d thanked the fairies for their cure. She didn’t confess she’d reminisced about the sights and sounds of the barn at George’s Cross. She didn’t tell about the heat of Hugh’s kiss and how much she’d enjoyed it, and she didn’t tell how his arrival had awakened something in her, something she thought was dead.

She didn’t tell any of those things, but Lady Corliss sensed them anyway.

When she finished, Lady Corliss leaned forward, folded her hands on the table before her, and asked Hugh, “Why did you do these things to discredit Lady Edlyn?”

“I had no wish to discredit Lady Edlyn,” he said with evident sincerity. “I only wish to marry her. She is alone. She needs a man to protect her.”

Edlyn snorted. “Now there’s nonsense if I ever heard it! I grew up as the chattel of first my father, then my husbands. See the protection they’ve given me.”