By Possession (36 page)

He pulled her back into the shadows of the hall and lifted her into an embrace. “I will come back as soon as I can. You said that you are mine until I retake Barrowburgh
and I will hold you to it. You will come with me when I go there, so make arrangements for someone else to run your inn.”

Aye, he would come back, but many weeks between now and then would pass with him gone. There had been so little time for happiness thus far, and not much more remained. Would it be enough to last the lifetime she faced without him?

“Will you bring Brian back with you?”

“I had not thought to.”

“He should see his father's triumph when it comes. He will not get in the way. I will care for him.”

A frown creased his expression. “He is safer where he is.”

“Please, Addis. I will not see him again after … He is your heir. I would think that you would want him by your side when you reentered those gates.” He did not look pleased with her request and she hesitated before pursuing it. “Perhaps if you share this with him you can learn some love for him.”

His face tightened, but so did his embrace. “Do not blame me if I cannot warm to him. When I look at his face I see betrayal.”

He saw Claire is what he meant. Brian had her coloring and face and radiance. Everyone else responded to the beauty with a smile, but she knew the reasons for Addis's scowls. His heart had shut on Claire eight years ago, and he had learned never to think of her. These last days he had spoken of many things, of his crusade and enslavement, of the woman Eufemia, of his father and family, but never had he mentioned Claire and what had occurred between them. Nor had he been receptive to discussions of Brian, who was a reminder of that pain. Hopefully the Lady Mathilda would love the child, because his father never might.

“I will promise that you will see him again, Moira, but I will not be bringing him to a siege camp. It is dangerous. I would not bring you either, but for my need of you.”

She tucked her head against his chest and inhaled his scent and relished his breath on her hair. “Will I receive word of you?”

“I will ask that you be told whatever is learned of me, but I face little danger. The whole realm has abandoned Edward. We only have the tragedy of a king hiding in his own country now.”

“Still, it is a big country. You might be gone a long while.”

“Aye, a long while.”

He lifted her chin to a kiss of gentle sadness. “I leave all of my heart with you, Moira. My body will be in Wiltshire and Wales, but my thoughts will be here with you.”

She abandoned any pretense of dignity and clung to him while her quiet tears flowed. She looked up at burning eyes moist with yearning. He smiled, caressed her face, and stepped away. Assuming a warrior's expression of duty and resolve, he walked into the yard.

It was Rhys who brought her news over the next weeks. He came as a message bearer but the second time she asked him to stay for supper as a friend. While they waited for the meal she showed him her inn, and the changes she had made to the chambers. When they emerged into the courtyard again he noticed Henry hauling water to the trough by the stables.

“You should think about sinking another well out here. If those ten beds fill with visitors, bringing water for all of the horses will be a burden.”

“Aye, and I am saving to expand the stables as well.

Next summer for both, I think, if I have the coin. Right now, with the court disbanded, there is not much trade for inns.”

“That will change, and soon. Word is that Lancaster prevented Edward from entering Wales. He and the Despensers are in the western shires, and the net is closing on them.”

“Do they have an army with them?”

“You worry for your knight? Nay, just a small group, not enough for a battle. No more than seventy, it is reported, and with Wales closed they lose some every day. Addis will come to no harm.”

She leaned against the inn's wall, glad he spoke so easily of Addis. He had hesitated accepting her invitation, but she was happy he had. She suspected he had offered to bring her the messages so as to check how she managed alone, and perhaps to see if she needed a friend. She did.

“You appear happy,” he said.

“I am happy. And sad. But you were right. The happiness gives the sadness some reason. He will be back, and I yearn to see him, but his return begins the end, doesn't it? It brings a soulful pain to think about that.”

“You have decided to remain here?”

“I will go with him while he fights for his home. He is going to tell Thomas Wake that he wants no betrothal until it is regained, that he will not bind Mathilda to a poor knight, but the match has been agreed to and Wake will lend his aid because of it. But once it is done, once he sits in the lord's chair again, I will come back here.”

“Surely he will visit London.”

“When he does, the solar is his. And my friendship will always be here for him. But he knows that it ends at Barrowburgh and with his marriage.”

“ 'Tis a hard course that you set, Moira. Are you sure it is what you want?”

She had been asking herself that same question frequently the last few weeks. “It is the only course that permits me to wish his happiness in the life I will never see. Our love has been beautiful and whole and I'll not live my years grasping at its remnants. Nor will I let the shadow of that love interfere with the contentment he might find with his new family. Aye, it is what I want.” She pushed away from the wall. “Now come and see how the cook I hired suits you. It is a man, and he is lately come from a manor is Kent.”

Rhys raised an eyebrow. “A runaway?”

She feigned surprise. “Heavens, I wouldn't know! Do you think it is possible? I never thought to ask. I just noticed that his meat pies surpass mine and knew you would never forgive me if I didn't take him on.”

He came again the next week to say that the elder Despenser had surrendered at Bristol, but that the king and Hugh had set to sea from Chepstow, just ahead of the advancing army. Word came soon after that both had been captured when they landed in Glamorgan. Hugh Despenser had been sent north to Hereford, but Lancaster was bringing the king east.

She had been living as if in a wakeful dream, going about her duties with a dull spirit and an inactive awareness. Now her heart and body awoke. She knew not how long it would take for that army to travel the breadth of the realm, nor if they came to London, nor if Addis would have other duties that might delay him after they handed the king over to the barons. She only knew that he was coming back. After two long months she would see him again soon.

She waited two weeks before allowing herself to expect him. Then she prepared the solar and took care with her
appearance every day, and her gaze drifted to the gate whenever she entered the yard. Time slowed because of how hard she waited.

The last leaves fell from the apple trees. Frost withered the flowers. The first snow fell. The city erupted with stories about Hugh Despenser's execution and Edward's imprisonment.

She waited some more.

CHAPTER 19

M
ATTHEW, THE NEW GROOM
, found her at the well.

“There's four knights in the courtyard asking if we have beds. I told 'em we are full, but they said that they would sleep in the hall if need be.”

Moira set the bucket on the ground and pulled her cloak against the biting wind. Rhys had been right about her trade improving. With King Edward imprisoned at Kenilworth, the barons had begun congregating at Westminster to debate his fate as soon as the holiday of the Nativity had passed. A parliament had been called to begin in a fortnight. All of the inns in London and Southwark had long ago filled.

She gazed out at the garden stripped of flowers and leaves and full of winter's chill. Barren, like her life. She bit her lip and valiantly made a decision.

“We will put them in the solar and I will use a pallet in the kitchen.”

She had resisted giving up that chamber, but had finally
accepted that the man for whom she saved it would not be returning.

Her excitement had desperately defied that reality. It had not dulled a whit during the additional weeks of waiting for him, of looking for his tall body every time she heard a noise near the gate. But it had never been him, nor Richard, nor anyone with word of his expected arrival.

The anticipation had transformed into worry when she learned that he had not accompanied the king to Kenilworth. After repeatedly badgering Rhys for information, the mason had reluctantly admitted that he had heard that Addis was spending the holy days at one of Wake's manors in Yorkshire. Both excitement and worry had vanished in one horrible heartbeat. With sick acceptance she had drawn the obvious conclusion.

Thomas Wake must have pressed for the early betrothal after all. When Addis had promised to come back he had not anticipated that. It would be madness to antagonize Wake in order to enjoy a few more weeks with Moira the innkeeper. She had decreed there would be an end and she could not blame him if circumstances had forced it sooner than she had expected.

After all, what choice did he have? The course was obvious, sensible, and practical. If asked she would have urged it on him. Of course. Certainly. If it plunged her from heaven into hell sooner than she had expected, that was the cost of such things.

Her heart admitted no anger, just a void of loss. Accepting the sense of it, the inevitability, did not make the disappointment easier to absorb. She carried a grief inside her like a weight, and had begun to wonder if it would ever lighten.

“There should be room in the stable if they have horses,” she said, forcing her mind to the practical details
on which she now hinged her life. “Tell Jane and Henry to make pallets for the solar.”

“When you said that chamber was always mine, I did not expect to share it with other than you,” a quiet voice said from the doorway.

She swung around, her heart flipping with a surge of joy that she battled to contain. She barely suppressed the impulse to throw herself into his arms.

She had never expected him to return here so soon after binding himself to Mathilda. She faced him awkwardly, determined to hold on to her dignity.

He stood tall and dark, a simple cloak floating over the buckskin garments. He appeared a little thinner for his travels, as he had when he first came back. Golden lights danced in his deep-set eyes while he inspected her reaction carefully.

“Go tell my men that we will stay here, in the hall if need be. And tell Henry to see that a bath is prepared in the solar,” he ordered the groom.

Matthew hustled off and Addis turned to her. “We both knew it would be a long while, Moira.”

“Aye. I did not know it would be this long though.”

“Nor did I, but duties kept me west.”

Duties.

“I received no word of you this last month. Just rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“That you were with Wake and spent the Nativity with him and …”

She bit off the bitter sound of her words and blocked her mind from memories of her own lonely feast day, spent with the servants while she pictured him charming little Mathilda in front of a merry household.

This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid. The jealousy. The desperate desire to probe for reassurances. It
demeaned them both. She had not realized how difficult this would be, but then she had expected to have more time to prepare for it.

“She is just a child. A pretty, frivolous girl. I found her … tedious.”

“She is your lady.”
And she will have you her whole life! Was it so selfish to have expected a few weeks more before that?

She hated herself like this. The combination of surprised relief and seething resentment kept her immobile. Addis observed her with perplexed annoyance.

“You are wounded and I am sorry for it, Moira. Let us go to the solar and I will tell you why I was delayed.”

The last thing she needed was to hear the details. “The solar is yours as I promised. You know where it is.” She lifted her bucket and turned to carry it around to the stables.

Three steps had him blocking her way. He pried the bucket from her grip and threw it aside.

“What is this? Have three months turned you cold?”

“I am not cold. I am joyed to see you, but …”

“Has some man been wooing you? The mason again? If so he can damn well wait.…”

“Rhys proved a better friend to you than to me. He heard where you were, who you were with, and tried not to tell me.”

“I could not refuse to go with Wake, no matter what my heart preferred.”

“I know that. I do. But those duties in the west, as you call them, have changed things, haven't they? Do not expect me to live as if they had not occurred. She is your lady now. Do not expect me to pretend she is not, and go on as if—”

He reached for her and cut her off with a firm kiss. “You are still mine, Moira.” Not a question. A statement. Actually, a command.

“I told you that I would not—”

He kissed her again. “Come to the solar. You will see that nothing has changed.”

Just like a man to think pleasure could heal all wounds. “I will not. You have made the marriage, Addis.”