By Design (22 page)

Her shoulders bowed lower. The memories began defeating her.

He reached for her. “Joan …”

She threw up a hand to ward him off. “Nay. Please do not. Leave now. Please, leave me alone.”

He rose, reluctant to abandon her like this. She appeared terribly limp, and tragically, pitifully alone. He thought that his heart would break for her.

He caressed her head with his fingertips as he passed, lightly enough that she would not feel. But he did. “I am sorry, Joan. I should have seen it sooner. I fear that whenever I touched you, it only made you remember.”

She kneaded with all her strength, praying the clay would absorb the horror as smoothly as it did her hands. It didn't happen this time. The despair just grew and grew, filling her until it choked her chest and throat in its demand to
come out. She used all of her strength to keep it contained, but its devastating power surged relentlessly until her hands and the clay blurred from the tears streaming into her eyes.

It was time, whether she wanted it or not. For over three years she had never really faced the despair, but she had no choice now. His questions had opened the frail scabs, and it just started flowing, like blood from a putrefied wound. She could not stop it this time. None of the old sanctuaries served her well enough. Not the anger or the hatred or even the clay.

She had often sought escape in her craft, but now she found release. She pounded and jabbed viciously as the emotions racked her. Gasping sobs groaned out of her so forcefully that they pained and bent her whole body. Tears fell like a waterfall onto the mass that she pummeled. The memories forced themselves into her mind so vividly that three years might have never passed.

Images of Guy, of his demands and touch, were the least of it. The real hell had not been at night, except when she woke and experienced the suffocating sense of entrapment. She had faced what occurred with her body long ago. Reliving the rest of it devastated her, though. The numbing of her soul. The lonely helplessness. The self-hatred and disgust. The sense of being so unclean that no bath could purify her.

She fought acknowledging all that, fought so hard that her body ached. It filled her anyway. It poured out of the places she had hidden it, swamping her until she groaned in surrender.

Sobbing uncontrollably, drowning in bleakness, she continued blindly attacking the clay. Her mind kept running away, trying to find shelter, but there was nowhere to hide.

Her head hurt. She thought that her chest would burst.
The sobs choked her so badly that she couldn't breathe. She folded her arms over her body in a frantic attempt to hold herself together.

It felt like grief, the worst grief she had ever known. Giving it a name made it a little better, but also more intense. Facing the loss broke her heart. It sharpened the pain with a biting nostalgia.

She careened, pressing her folded arms into her bent body so hard that she hurt herself. She finally mourned for the life torn from her. Not the comforts, but the happiness and the innocence. The trust and faith. She mourned for her childhood, and the girl she had once been.

It blew through her like a deadly storm. She lost her mind for a while and only scathing pain existed. Pain that threatened to tear her to shreds.

Slowly, like all tempests, it eased a little. She tried to regain some control. Swallowing the anguish shot cramps through her body. Forcing back the tears seared her eyes and thickened her throat.

Calm came slowly. It brought a new knowing and a new acceptance and the vaguest relief.

She grew aware of herself, and the bench and the clay. Twilight had fallen on the garden. She unfolded her arms and slid her hands onto the mass on the board between her knees. Her violence had created lumps and pits and jagged valleys.

She squeezed and smoothed until she had a round, flat form. A compulsion to work it slid through her. Like the line of the sun spreading over a field after a storm, the hope of solace peeked through her misery and beckoned her.

She had found comfort in her craft before. Perhaps she could now. It was the one good thing to rise out the destruction. She would make something beautiful, an image from the old days, and give form to what was left of the part of her that had once known goodness.

Sniffing back the threatening sorrow, she let her hands move. She would not make a statue this time, but a plaque in relief. She scooped and modeled, making the forms rise and swell.

It absorbed her completely. Peace came, melancholy but secure. The light grew so dim that she could not see what she made. It just emerged, flowing directly from her soul to her fingers, skipping her mind. It felt so right, though. It would be perfect. Beautiful and perfect and good. A little monument to who she had once been and to what she had once known.

“What do you have there?”

It was Mark, coming toward her from the garden portal. She straightened and realized that dark had fallen. “I don't know for sure. A face, I think. Father's, I think.”

He went very still. She instantly regretted saying that. She did not want to draw him into her unhappiness.

“Bring me a candle, would you?”

He went into the kitchen and came back with a small taper. She took it from him. “Go and get some sleep now.”

He gladly obeyed. He would not want to see their father's face. He carried his own wounds, and licked them his own way. She lowered the little flame. Its flickering light sent the smallest glow over the clay. Her blindness had produced something fairly crude, but the visage was distinct.

Not her father's face. It was not an image from her girlhood, but a man from her present.

It was Rhys.

C
HAPTER
15

H
E WENT TO THE SOLAR
window again and again. The sound of her grieving drew him there.

Night fell, and still she sat, straddling the bench. Not the soulful careening of before, though. She worked the clay now.

That was a hopeful sign. Her hands would express what her soul needed to know. Creating something from base materials was a spiritual act as well as a physical skill. There could be healing in it. He had realized that as a boy, and it was a big reason why he would never put aside the chisel, no matter how many buildings he planned.

A tiny light appeared. He watched it flicker while she sat motionlessly, holding it in her hand. She appeared calmer.

He turned away, leaving her to her privacy again. He sat in the chair where he had held his vigil while he listened to her sobs rise from the garden.

She would not like to know that he had heard. He would have preferred not to, because her sadness
wrenched his heart. It was empathy that had kept him here as much as affection. It was also guilt. Not just for bringing her to this state, but also for not preventing the events that had shredded her life.

His mind saw himself as a youth, resolved to make his own justice for a destroyed soul. He had not thought of it as the right thing to do; it had simply seemed the
only
thing to do. The marcher lords held more power than barons did elsewhere in the realm. The son of the man who was the law would never answer to the law himself. And this crime had been shrewd. If a woman went willingly, how could she claim to have been forced?

There had been weeks of planning and practice with the bow. Days of silent watching. When the opportunity came, however, he had experienced an instant of cowardice. That hesitation had led to failure, and then to the run across England to escape the search for the hidden assassin who had dared try such a thing.

If he had been braver and faster, Mortimer would have died that day. The realm would have been spared his ambitions. No army would have gone to Joan's home three years ago.

No henchman would have degraded her.

He had come to this city sworn to fight when necessary, and to never hesitate again. Not just for that woman, and not just against Mortimer. That commitment had gov erned his life and his choices as surely as the urge to build had.

But fate could be capricious. In the fight for justice, he had helped hand more power to the man whose ruthless-ness he had wanted to avenge as a youth. He had made a ruler of the rapist he had once tried to kill.

All his risks, all his ideals, were thrown in his face. Worse, he had actually been an agent in the corruption of his own beliefs.

He lifted a rolled parchment from the floor by his boot. He had grabbed some of his fantasies to bring in here to distract himself from the misery in the garden. That had been hopeless. He might peer at the drawings, but he had not really seen any of then. The part of him that mattered had been down there with her, feeling her pain, praying that those tears would purge the worst of the hidden misery from her heart.

He unrolled the plan. It was an old one, done during the rebellion. With war threatening, he had turned his imagination to castles. It showed a keep and walls, with all its parts articulated. It was very detailed, in ways few of his designs ever were.

He calls one of his builders to repair the walls. Someday that builder will be you
.

She had seen to the heart of it at once. Seen more than he wanted to admit to himself. Her own sense of justice, still hot and pure, had recognized loss of faith when faced with it.

Slow footsteps sounded on the stairs. That would be Mark, bringing up water for the night.

A blond crown and lit taper emerged from the stairwell. Then a delicate face and very blue eyes. It was not Mark. Joan had decided to take this chore tonight.

She watched the bucket to make sure none of the water slopped out. She stepped into the solar and began to head to the bedchamber before she noticed him sitting near the cold hearth.

She stopped, the heavy bucket straining her stiff arm. The little flame that she held cast shadows over her shift and arms and legs. She had not remembered to put her gown back on.

He peered at her face, hoping for a sign that she had conquered the memories, and not the other way around.

Her poise had returned. That was a good sign. She held
herself proudly, but he saw the fragility of that pose. He sensed that, given half a reason, she would break again.

He wanted to go to her, but she might not want that.

“Who was she? The woman you told me about. How did you know her?”

Her voice sounded distant. She continued the conversation from the garden, as if two hours of hell had not inter vened.

“My aunt. The wife of my father's brother.”

She paused, as if it took time for his response to pene trate and be considered. “So you were one of the family that suffered.”

“Aye.”

Another pause. “Did you love her?”

“She was a young bride, not much older than I. I loved her as an aunt, but maybe in other ways, too.”

“You all wanted her to go to him, didn't you? So that you would not starve. Did you all despise her even as she saved you?”

He knew where this was going, and cursed the world for its simplistic ideas of virtue and the burdens they put on women. “I can not speak for the others, but I did not de spise her. I honored her.”

Her body tensed. The bucket wobbled. Water lapped over its edge. “Do you despise me? Do you see a woman defiled when you look at me now?” It came out firmly, like a challenge. She gazed at him, waiting to see if he lied.

He stretched out his hand. “Please come here to me, Joan.”

She hesitated, then put down the bucket and walked over. He blew out her taper and set it aside, then took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “When I look at you I see a brave maid who saved her brother's life.”

“Not a maid.”

“Aye, a maid. Untouched in the ways that matter.”

Her glance contained some gratitude, and a bit of reassurance.

She stayed there, as if she did not know how to leave. He held her hand and waited for her to decide why she had come.

“Please do not tell Mark. He does not know. I brought the water because he was asking me questions. He wanted to know why I was out in the garden, and what had happened to make me sad. I am hoping he will be asleep when I go back down.”

That was not why she had come. She looked very lovely standing before him in the candlelight. A little mysterious and very alone. Somewhat childlike in her distraction. She belonged to herself, but even the strong needed support sometimes.

“Can I stay here until he sleeps?”

“You can stay as long as you want. You can stay all night. You are always welcome.”

She understood the offer. She contemplated it, shyly fingering her shift. “The last time your bed was chaste.”

Maybe her choice truly came from her desire to protect her brother from learning the truth. Perhaps she merely sought shelter from the loneliness of her grief. His heart did not care why she accepted. He was just grateful that she would let him comfort her a little. He was relieved that she would not be alone with her thoughts tonight.

“It will be again. As chaste as you want, Joan. For as long as you want.”