By Right of Arms (26 page)

“Perhaps he wishes to shoot a few arrows for himself, lest his desire to feed his villeins be questioned,” Girvin said loudly. “I say these people are well fed, Hyatt. And almost everyone here present works as hard as the lord for their keeping.”

Hyatt wondered at Girvin’s wisdom in taunting Faon, for he knew that was what he did. He tried to disregard the man’s jeering. “I am anxious to see if the same evidence of raiders exists in the south wood. If so, we must brace ourselves.”

“Not only the search for camps, Hyatt, but for better game.” Girvin lifted his horn of ale. “I thank you most kindly for conquering a castle endowed of such good cooking talents. I swear I’ve never eaten quite so well as this.” He gave his middle a pat. “I think it has begun to show,” he said, getting a round of laughing agreements from the other men.

“It has proven a good place,” another man said.

“Even the women here are more to my liking than in England,” said another.

“Hah, the women
anywhere
are to your liking.”

Hyatt had to laugh at the heightened color on the cheeks of the young man in his group considered to be the most vulnerable to a swinging skirt.

“Since I guard this place and spend more time here than any of the riders, I take a good, long look at the town each day. The people of De la Noye regard this occupation with considerable respect now. And they are showing the signs of my hunting efforts as well as I.” Girvin leaned back in his chair and seemed to survey the room.

There was another round of laughter and several well-fed men gave their firm stomachs a hearty salute. “I am glad we all agree it is a good and plentiful place. Let’s see if you still think so when you rise before dawn to hunt.” Hyatt stood from his place at the table and, seeing that Aurélie was finished with her duties, held an arm out to her. She looked more lovely than ever, and he was eager to leave all the toasting and jesting to his men.

“Even your wife is of stouter frame these days, Sir Hyatt,” Girvin said as Aurélie came near the table. She stopped short beside Hyatt, looking with questioning eyes at Girvin. His manner was more jovial and louder than usual. “Have we toasted the beautiful lady? I think a toast has been too long neglected, since we had no wedding feast. To Lady Aurélie.”

Someone thrust a horn into Hyatt’s hand and he drank, though he did not hold it high. He could toast her beauty better than anyone, but she seemed rigid and uncomfortable beside him, as if embarrassed by the attention being drawn to her. As he drained his cup, he let an arm casually encircle her waist.

“I vow she grows more beautiful,” Girvin chortled. “Does she admit she prefers this marriage to the last?” Hyatt frowned at his knight, not getting much pleasure from Girvin’s light mood. “To what do we owe the bounty of goodness that shows itself, my lady? Sir Hyatt, did your seed strike a fertile place where Giles’s failed?”

Hyatt slowly turned to look at his wife, meeting her eyes. There was a proud swell of emotion there as she tried to remain composed. His gaze slowly dropped to her bosom, and then to her waist. He had eaten many a meal beside her, and unless her habits in his absence had been gluttonous, Girvin had just voiced an explanation for the changes Hyatt had earlier sensed.

“He means to keep us guessing,” someone laughed.

“Nay, it is that he does not want too many toasts on the night before an early hunt.”

“I think he is jealous of his privacy. Hyatt leaves us last to know when he has wed and no doubt will share the news of some new heir when we hear the squalling infant from behind his chamber doors.”

Hyatt’s gaze burned the question into Aurélie’s eyes. She saw no escape and slowly turned to the guffawing knights. They stilled their tongues instantly, almost reverently, when she looked at them. “I hope you do not drink yourselves into illness, for Hyatt’s child will not be born for many months. You may toast your lord, for he has begun to seed his dynasty.”

A round of cheers went up and Aurélie turned back to Hyatt, her voice barely heard by him, for she did not choose to share her words. “I would have chosen another time to tell you,
monseigneur.
I have only just become certain.”

“To Hyatt’s son,” someone shouted.

Hyatt’s eyes were as gentle as she had ever seen them. In that instant she understood all that had motivated Faon, for the light in her husband’s eyes at the prospect of a child equaled her own feelings of joy. The mistress had seen this in Hyatt and had used the power that such devotion could wield. “Would you like to escape this,
chérie?”
She nodded and he pulled her along past the table toward the stair.

“What is this? You drink to Hyatt’s son?”

“His next son, we should say. Lady Aurélie is with child.”

“Nay!”

The voice had the quality of a scream of pain, and all heads turned to see Faon standing at the end of the table, palms pressing flat against the solid oak and green eyes ablaze with defiance. As Aurélie watched her, Faon slowly collected herself, but the struggle to resume her usual confidence was obvious.

“She is with child?”

“Yea,” Hyatt said quietly.

Faon began to laugh, an almost hysterical sound. “What makes you certain it is yours, Hyatt? If not Giles, perhaps the lusty lad, Verel. She toyed with him aplenty while you were away.”

A piercing feeling assailed Aurélie’s stomach, not from the accusation, but from what she saw. Faon’s face was white with panic, her eyes glittering with rage. The mistress had obviously assumed, as many did, that Aurélie was barren and would fail to produce children for Hyatt. The woman’s single asset was publicly stripped away. Aurélie stole a glance at Girvin, whose loud jesting had finally ceased. That hearty knight leaned back in his chair and looked with shrewd satisfaction at his prey.

Hyatt’s hand gently squeezed Aurélie’s waist. “The child is mine,” he said sternly. “And that question need not arise after tonight.”

“You may wish it so, my lord, but ’tis well known the lady lies to you. Perhaps when you conquered this keep, Giles had finally succeeded with her.”

Hyatt glared at Faon for a long quiet moment, and then his eyes slowly shifted to Aurélie. She stared at him, pleading in her expression that he not shame Giles’s memory with the truth. His hand tightened at her waist for a moment and she saw his slight, almost imperceptible nod.

He looked back at Faon. “The lady’s child was sired by me, not because I delude myself, or because I graciously accept another man’s offspring. ’Tis mine because it is. I know it. And that is what matters.”

Faon straightened as if slapped, her lips pursed in a tight line. “What about Derek?”

Hyatt shrugged. “I made my oath to Derek, though he was not old enough to understand. I make my oath here and now to this child, since there is no question it is mine. If you wish to raise any questions, Mistress Faon, raise the question of your own future. You are the one to worry.”

Her voice was strained and hurt. “Hyatt, do you warn me before your wife, your men?”

“You are the one person foolish enough to question my intentions before this woman and these men. Shall I answer you before them?” He shook his head and frowned at the panicked look on her face. “I have said that you would be cared for as long as you mother my son to my liking and you heed your place in my household. Yet you strain my generosity. If you do not like your circumstances, you are free to go. If you wish to stay, mind your behavior carefully. I am very weary of the trouble you create.”

“Do you warn
her?”
Faon asked in a trembling voice. “Or is it so different because you have made her your wife?”

“Everyone who lives on my mercy knows it, except you.” He turned his head to look at Aurélie, but her eyes were downcast as she quietly listened to what he had to say. She was amazed that there was little anger in his voice. “You, who have the most cause to be careful, practice the least caution. You assume some rights that have never been granted to you, publicly or even privately. Yea, the lady was warned, and further, she heeds the warning. She has quickly learned the one thing that you fail to grasp. I value her while she serves me faithfully. If the loyal service fails, the value drops. Likewise, the greater energy put to honoring my lordship, to lending dignity to my name, the higher esteem she gains in my house.

“Now I see that my generosity with you bites me, for you are ungrateful and unwise. I regret that I let you think I could be used so easily.”

He turned to mount the stairs, holding Aurélie’s elbow.

“Hyatt … please …”

He turned back to her. “My last warning to you is this—if you destroy what you have by your own lips, your own foolishness, I will not attempt to rescue you. I have not betrayed you yet. Will you betray yourself?”

Aurélie’s eyes narrowed in confusion, for what Hyatt said caused the woman to clamp her mouth shut and turn away from him. She followed him up the stairs, letting out her breath in a sigh when the door was closed behind them. She stood, feeling oddly out of place, as Hyatt moved away from her to light candles and open shutters to let the cooling summer breezes cleanse the stale air in their chamber. There was a heavy silence that she did not break for many minutes.

“She hates me so, Hyatt. I cannot blame her; she thinks I have taken you away from her.”

“If she does, she lies to herself.”

“But she does … and I alone know that you dislike all women and only value their work and the children they might give you.”

He smiled slightly. “I have never cared much for women; they are treacherous and use their feigned devotion as brutally as a soldier uses his sword. They pledge it, remove it, cripple men with it, and then hold it as a chain around their lives. I do not wish to allow any woman that kind of dominion over me. Yea, I see that Faon wishes to do this to me, and I refuse to be drawn into her plan. Yet I know the worth of loyalty. Do not betray me, Aurélie, and perhaps you will be content.”

“You could do the same to me,” she said softly. “Mayhap you will be pleased with me for a few years and then cast me aside for another.”

“My lady, Mistress Faon has not been deposed from her position by my marriage to you.”

“Of course she has. She was your woman before you …”

Hyatt shook his head. “Faon has assumed some sense of privilege because she is the mother of my son. She has taken liberties with servants and even guards, all on behalf of Derek. But she was never at my right side, never granted privy authority on my behalf, and was never seated above the salt. Faon is a servant in my household. She holds a high position of servitude since Derek is her son, but nothing about her life has changed at all since I wed you. If she held onto some hope that I would marry her one day, she did so despite my many assurances to the contrary.”

“Do you mean to say that you got her with child and kept her as a servant? A slave?”

“Would I have been a better man to abandon them both? To fail to follow my own act with responsibility? Or to deny her the right of motherhood by taking away her child? Perhaps I should have chosen not to be a father, though in truth the boy is mine. Or would you say me righteous to marry her despite the fact that she would be a poor wife?”

“But do you not see how she hurts for want of you?”

He sighed. “Does it appear, because of the woman’s suffering, that I am not steadfast? That I am without honor? Need I plead my case to you? To my men? To a priest?”

“Your men seem not to judge you, Hyatt. I do not wish to judge you, but …”

He approached her and grasped her gently by her upper arms. He looked deeply into her eyes and then slowly covered her mouth with his. She was amazed at the way his kiss caused her to tremble, weaken, and give herself to his embrace. She did not lie to herself that she obliged in the obedience he demanded. She relished the taste and touch of him. It was not for her rightful place in her home or for the people who depended on her that her pulse quickened and she returned his caress. He had only just come to her, by route of the most skilled sword, and it was already becoming impossible to think of living without him.

He released her mouth and looked into her eyes. “Judge me, Aurélie. I welcome it; I encourage it. But do not ask me to defend myself against the slurs of others, or explain myself in the face of another’s unhappiness. Ask no other how I should be judged. Look at my acts and decide for yourself. I will not argue that I am honorable and loyal. I will not beg to be believed or understood. I will never win my good reputation by laying down in speeches the low virtues of another. I did all that once and learned that there is only one way to the truth—through what a man
does,
and not through rumors and accusations.”

“It may prove the harder way, Hyatt.”

“It is
always
the harder way. But the surest.”

* * *

There burned a single candle on a small stool near the open window. The hour was past midnight and the summer sky was filled with luminous stars. The air was cool and a half-moon sat high against the black velvet of the sky.

Faon knelt on the floor beside the candle. Nima sat on a bench before the open window. Derek and the servants slept soundly, but still Faon’s voice was hushed.

“You must
kill
her.”

Nima’s old hands trembled. “I cannot. I will not.”

“If you refuse me, I will tell Hyatt all. All!”

“Even though you are foolish enough to jeopardize your only shelter, you are not foolish enough to end your own life.”

“She must not have this child. Nima, she must
not.”

“Do not ask me again, Faon. I have obliged you in too many evil things. I will not do this for you.”

“We will perish if he does not become my lover soon. Derek will perish.”

“Nay, to Derek he is committed. You must accept the truth soon. If you do not, he will cast you out with nothing.”

Faon fell into soft tears. “I was good enough once. He denies himself, but he wants me. I know it. I know it. I have always known it. Why does he do this to me?”

Nima’s shaking hand reached forward and gently brushed the hair away from her granddaughter’s face. “You tricked him into siring the child, as was your plan. It served, Faon, for he took you from your father’s house as you wished. You have not worn a bruise since we escaped Montrose. But Hyatt is clever and has avoided the bindings you would tie about him. Nothing has worked to change him. Nothing will. Accept his charity and abide here in peace, or give him his son and let us go.”