Dark Destroyer (36 page)

“It was.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“That depends. What is it?”

“You will not know until I ask.”

Now, Rosamund was growing wary. “Speak, then.”

Kathalin looked at her mother, cocking her head thoughtfully. “Have you ever been in love with a man?”

It was a question that caught Rosamund off-guard. Her brow furrowed for a moment before speaking. “Why do you ask?”

Kathalin was trying very hard to manipulate her mother into the direction she wanted her to go. She shrugged casually. “All of this talk of marriage has me thinking,” she said. “Is love as wonderful as I have heard it is?”

Rosamund shook her head, averting her gaze. “A foolish question.”

“Then you have never been in love?”

“I did not say that.”

“Then you have!”

Flustered, Rosamund looked away completely. “Of course I have,” she said. “Every woman has been in love at least once in her life.”

“Are you in love with my father?”

Rosamund’s head snapped up, her eyes flashing again. “That is none of your affair.”

Kathalin could see she had the woman off balance, which had been her goal. She simply nodded, pretending to be sorry that she had asked the question.

“Of course, it is not,” she said quietly. “But I thought that if you understood love, then you would understand my predicament.”

Rosamund looked at her suspiciously. “What predicament?”

Kathalin gazed into eyes that were the exact same color as her own. “I am in love,” she said quietly. “I have never been in love before, so this is something quite new and wonderful to me.”

Now, Rosamund was intrigued.
Very
intrigued. She peered at Kathalin, surprised by the woman’s statement.

“Who are you in love with?” she asked.

Kathalin sensed she had her mother’s interest and she very much hoped to capitalize on it.
God, help me convince her that this betrothal to Alexander is not right!
In order to do that, she was willing to lie. She had to.

It was time to raise the stakes.

“Gates de Wolfe,” she said softly. “And he is in love with me. Alexander knows this. I am definitely not opposed to marriage if it is to Gates. You must betroth me to him, Rosamund. Alexander will not want me, anyway.”

Rosamund was deeply shocked; that much was obvious. “Gates?” she repeated. “He… he cannot possibly be in love with you!”

Kathalin’s eyebrows lifted curiously. “Why not?”

Rosamund was very quickly growing animated in manner. “Because he cannot love any woman,” she insisted. “Do you not know about him, girl? He will say anything to bed you. Sweet Jesus…
has
he? Did he tell you he loved you and then take you to his bed?”

Kathalin could see how much the very idea horrified Rosamund. She was going to strike back at the woman any way she could and do whatever she had to do in order to gain Gates as a husband. If this was the way then, God forgive her, she would take it. But she stopped short of a flat-out lie; with Rosamund, perhaps the intimation of as much would work the magic she hoped to work. Coyly, she looked away.

“He
does
love me,” she said. “He told me so. I believe him.”

Rosamund was struggling out of her chair, her outrage evident. “Has he taken you to his bed?” she nearly shouted.

Kathalin could see her mother attempting to stand from the corner of her eye. “And if he has?”

The shock was nearly too great for Rosamund to bear. She fell back into her seat. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Please tell me it is not true.”

“If I want to marry him, and he loves me, why would it be such a terrible thing?”

Rosamund clutched the arms of her chair, her nubby fingers gripping at the wood through the fabric wrappings she wore. “Let me make this perfectly clear, Kathalin,” Rosamund said, sensing that her daughter was not taking this situation seriously. “If he has, in fact, bedded you, then I will make sure Jasper throws him in the vault and strips him of his honorable knighthood. I will then turn him over to the House of de Lohr so that they can punish him as they see fit. I will not let Gates get away with deflowering my daughter simply to satisfy his lust. I will make sure he is terribly punished. Do you comprehend me?

Kathalin looked at her mother and, suddenly, she realized that she may have raised the stakes of the game too high. She hadn’t expected Rosamund to turn her anger on Gates. Concerned that she may have pushed Rosamund too far, she nodded.

“I do,” she said. “But you needn’t worry. He did not take me to his bed. He never even suggested such a thing. Rosamund, please… I love the man and wish to marry him. He has sworn to me that he will be a good and true husband, and I believe him. Please allow me my happiness; for once in my life, do something that will make me happy. I have spent so many years alone and sad, existing at St. Milburga’s because I had to, but what I have discovered with Gates is that there is happiness in the world, happiness such as I had never even imagined. I have had a brief glimpse of this and I want to know it for the rest of my life. If you were in love in your lifetime as you say you were, then think back to that time and of how badly you wanted to be with the man you loved. That is where I am now. Won’t you please let me know such joy?”

All of the manipulation, the game-playing, and the bargaining between the two of them fled and all that was left was honesty and anguish. Rosamund stared at Kathalin, seeing the raw emotion on her face, and it cut through the hardness and the control that the woman had been exhibiting. The look of pure hope cut through everything until Rosamund hardly had any resistance at all. What she saw before her was herself as a young woman, in love for the first time. What she saw was great anticipation for the future.

But much as Rosamund’s hope had been destroyed, so would Kathalin’s.

“I understand your plight,” she finally said. “I understand that you wish to be with the man you love. But life does not always give us what we hope for, Kathalin. Sometimes it gives us absolutely nothing and it is God’s will that we make the best of such things. I loved Jasper when I married him. I, too, had the great hopes that you do for our future together. But a terrible disease took my husband from me. You have only known love for a short time; it will be easier to forget. Alexander is a fine man and I am sure, someday, you will become fond of him and remember Gates only as a warm memory. Gates is a man with too many ghosts in his past, ghosts that will shame you and shame the name of de Lara, and it is for those reasons that I cannot agree to your marriage with him. You do not understand now, but in time, you will.”

Kathalin was left feeling hollow and defeated by her mother’s response. The course of the entire volatile conversation had been for naught. She was where she didn’t want to be, refused marriage to the man she loved. Well, it would
not
end here. Much as Gates had sworn not to surrender, neither would she.

“You would deny me my happiness because you were denied yours?” she asked, pain in her words. “You have such power over everything about me… why can you not let me be happy?”

Rosamund didn’t want to argue any longer. She was exhausted from the conversation and she finally shook her head at Kathalin, waving her away.

“I am sorry,” she said simply. “You will leave me now. I must rest.”

Kathalin was distressed that she was being cut short. “That is all?” she said. “You have nothing more to say to me?”

Rosamond waved her off again. “I do not,” she said. “I have said all I intend to. Go, now. Please.”

It was the end, at least for now. Kathalin stood up from the stool she was sitting upon and, without another word, went to the chamber door. She lifted the latch and paused, wanting to say something more, but she thought better of it when she watched her mother’s maid practically lifting the woman out of the chair. It was clear that the woman was beyond exhaustion by the conversation. Perhaps it was best if she left now and let her mother rest and reflect upon their discussion. Perhaps if she thought about what Kathalin said enough, she might have some sympathy for her and change her mind.

With a heavy heart, she left the chamber and went across the hall to her own, bolting herself inside as Gates had asked. Dropping to her knees beside her bed, she lost herself in prayer.

Praying for a miracle.

“Rosamund!”

Half-asleep and startled by the sound of someone hissing her name, Rosamund quickly covered her face as she rolled onto her back, struggling to see in the darkness. It was dark in her room as the black clouds had returned, blotting out the sun and threatening an icy downpour. Blinking her eyes, Rosamund could see Jasper standing over her bed, curtains in his hands where he had yanked them back.

“Rosamund!” he hissed again. “Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Rosamund said, muffled, through the veil over her face. “Why have you come? What has happened?”

Jasper turned away from the bed, still gripping the curtains and nearly tearing them down in his haste. He ended up ripping one down and the maid rushed out of the shadows to pick it up from the floor, but Jasper was already across the room by that time. It was clear that he was agitated, pacing around like a man with a good deal on his mind.

“This betrothal with Kathalin,” he said to his wife, wringing his hands in frustration. “I have just come from Alexander and Gates where I was informed that Alexander will refuse the betrothal because Gates is in love with the girl. Can you imagine? Gates de Wolfe being in love with any woman? It is preposterous!”

Rosamund struggled to sit up on the bed with her maid’s help. Hearing such news from Jasper’s lips did not surprise her, considering she had just heard the same information from her daughter.

“Kathalin was just here and told me the same thing,” she said. “She says that she wants to marry Gates and swears that he wants to marry her as well.”

Jasper threw up his arms in an exasperated gesture. “It is true!” he said. “Gates nearly wept as he told me, begging me to permit him to marry Kathalin. Can you imagine the outrageousness of such a request? I cannot believe he would be bold enough to even ask after the years I have spent paying off fathers and brothers of the women he has compromised. The man must have lost his mind!”

Rosamund affixed the veil across her face to the wimple that the maid was struggling to put on her head. When she lay down to rest, she had pulled both of the items off of her head, items designed to cover her horrifically disfigured face. Now she was quickly trying to put them back on again. She wasn’t sure Jasper had even seen how ravaged her face had become in the darkness but she hoped not. She liked for the man she once loved to remember her as she was and not now how she had become, which is why she kept herself fully covered at all times.

It was for Jasper’s sake.

“Gates came to you, did he?” she asked her husband, pondering that revelation. “I thought Kathalin was fabricating her story, but it seems as if Gates has confirmed it.”

Jasper nodded, raking his fingers through his graying hair. “He very much confirmed it,” he said. Then, his pacing slowed as he struggled to think clearly on what he had just witnessed in Gates’ small chamber. “I will admit that he was quite convincing. He truly behaved as if he were in love with Kathalin and is devastated by the fact we have betrothed her to Alexander. And Alex – he was a martyr on his friend’s behalf. He is willing to give up a good deal of money and a castle for Gates. Such madness!”

As Jasper ranted, Rosamund contemplated what he was telling her, coming to think that, perhaps, there might be something to all of this. Kathalin had pleaded with her to be allowed to marry Gates and, at the same time, Gates had evidently pleaded with Jasper the very same thing, which led her to believe that there was some truth to this surprising love story. Rosamund had been quite willing to discount it before but with this new information, she found herself wondering if it was all true. She eyed Jasper as the man paced around.

“Mayhap it is not such madness, after all,” she said. “If Alex is willing to give up so much and both Kathalin and Gates have declared their desire to marry out of love, then mayhap there is truth to it.”

Jasper frowned at her. “It does not matter if there is truth to it,” he said. “Love or not, Kathalin will
not
marry Gates. We have had this discussion, Rosamund. His reputation as a scoundrel will not become our daughter’s shame.”

Rosamund simply lifted her shoulders and averted her gaze. “A grandson with de Lara and de Wolfe blood in him would be a powerful knight, indeed,” she said, reminding him of what she’d said once before. “Is that not who you would wish to leave your legacy to?”

Jasper was coming to look at her as if she’d lost her mind. “And what of a grandson with de Lara and de Lohr blood?” he said. “Will he be any less great?”

Rosamund shook her head. “He would not,” she admitted. “But Kathalin does not love Alex.”

Jasper stomped over to the bed where she was sitting. “It does not matter who she loves,” he declared. “She will marry Alex and that is the end of it. In fact, we must make haste with this wedding so that the deal will be sealed and there will be nothing Kathalin or Gates or even Alex can do about it. These foolish children do not know that we are doing what is best for them so it is time that we move ahead with it. I have no more time for nonsense; I will summon the priest from town and we shall have the ceremony by tomorrow.”

Rosamund wasn’t surprised by his directive; Jasper often made his decisions quickly and, at times, rashly. But there was something suspicious in her gaze as she looked at him.

“You do not trust that Gates will not take Kathalin and run away,” she said, reading his thoughts. “Or you do not trust that Alex will not simply vanish, leaving us with no groom.”

Jasper sighed heavily. “If you had seen the look on Gates’ face when he was pleading for Kathalin’s hand, you might think the same thing,” he said. “And Alex is staunchly opposed to marrying the woman that Gates loves, so I would not put it past those two to conspire against us. Therefore, we must make this marriage quickly. You understand, of course.”

Rosamund nodded. “Of course,” she murmured. “But remember what it was like to be in love, Jasper. The sun rises and sets upon the wings of love. If Gates and Kathalin are truly in love, then this will be very difficult for them. It will be difficult for Alex as well and, ultimately, that could disrupt your knight corps. You have strong and loyal men in your service who are also friends. If Kathalin marries Alex, and Gates is in love with her, you may be dooming your army.”

She had a point, and a very good one, but Jasper would not admit it. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered that himself, but he was convinced that his men would do as they were told regardless of any personal feelings on the matter. He was convinced that whatever feelings Gates held for Kathalin would eventually fade away. Such a man like de Wolfe, with a lover in every nearby town, would soon enough forget about a woman he once loved.

At least, Jasper hoped so.

“Pah,” he finally said, flicking a wrist at his wife as if to brush her off. “Love is easily forgotten. Are you taking their side, then?”

Rosamund shook her head but she was hurt that he’d brushed off the suggested memories of the love they’d once shared whilst trying to make her point.

“Not at all,” she said. “As I mentioned, I thought Kathalin was simply living in her own fantasy when she came to tell me that Gates wished to marry her, but hearing that Gates came to you as well… it simply confirms to me that Kathalin must have been telling the truth. Did you tell Elreda and Henry any of this?”

Jasper looked queerly at her. “How do you know that they are here?”

She nodded. “Kathalin told me.”

Jasper understood in that brief explanation. Rosamund always seemed to have the pulse of the fortress, seeing and knowing much from her confinement in her room.

“They do not know,” he said, answering her question. “But I must tell them. They will have to keep close watch of Alex and make sure he does not do anything foolish.”

“Agreed.”

“Then you support my decision to have the wedding immediately?”

“I do.”

That was all Jasper needed to hear. He fled her chamber to tell Henry and Elreda of the news, leaving the door open in his haste so that the maid had to rush to close it. Rosamund remained sitting on her bed, her mind lingering on the situation between her daughter and Gates de Wolfe.

Aye, she knew what it was to be in love. She remembered that much of it and she had hoped that Jasper had, too, but if he did, he would not acknowledge such a thing.
Love is easily forgotten
. Now, she was starting to have some doubt as to whether or not she and Jasper were doing the right thing. Would it be so terrible to marry Gates de Wolfe, a man with a history of women? Men could change. Rosamund knew that first-hand because her loving husband, Jasper, had changed drastically when disease began to ravage her body. The man who had sworn to love her until death and be true to her, and only her, had broken that vow.

Rosamund eyed the maid as the woman tried to affix the curtain that Jasper had yanked off. She’d stopped resenting the quiet, plain woman long ago, knowing that the maid had not been given the option of refusing Jasper’s advances. Still, when she looked at the woman, at her breasts and hips, knowing that her husband had touched them, it still hurt her as it did the first time she’d become aware of it.

Men could change, indeed.

The sun was setting in the western horizon, but one couldn’t tell very much with the collection of tarnished silver clouds that crowded up the sky above.

Kathalin had been in her chamber most of the afternoon, having not left it since her conversation with her mother. The truth was that she didn’t want to leave it, locked away from the world, because every time that door opened, something drastic happened. She wasn’t sure she could take anything drastic again today but she was desperate to see Gates and to know of his conversation with her father. If it was anything like the conversation she’d had with her mother, then the future she had so hopefully dreamed about wasn’t quite as bright as she had wished. In fact, it had turned stormy and uncertain.

The chamber she occupied now, the one that was located opposite her mother’s lavish bower, was small but comfortable. There was a big hearth that kept the room very warm and a very comfortable bed she had slept soundly upon. Her possessions, the ones that Gates had purchased for her those weeks ago, had followed her into this chamber and were neatly put away in a slender but well-made wardrobe cabinet. The lumpy, white soap was sitting out next to a basin of cold water and the fur-lined cloak hung on a peg near the door. Everything in the room, from the soap to the cloak to the contents of the wardrobe, reminded Kathalin of Gates.

It was both a depressing and comforting sight. Kathalin sat on the wide sill of the lancet window overlooking the garden, the same window where she had first seen the dried, dead garden. She wasn’t looking so much at the garden any longer because it reminded her of the conversation with her mother and the long line of de Lara women that she was now coming to hate because they reminded her of her separation from Gates. She had no emotional link to her family, and especially not now. Her only emotional link was to Gates and she prayed he would come to her soon to tell her of better news from his conversation with Jasper. In fact, she’d been praying steadily on that very subject since her meeting with her mother.

Please, God… let us be together!

As she gazed up at the darkened sky, watching the birds as they flew about, seeking cover before the storm broke, she caught movement down in the garden. Peering down, she could see that Gates was standing there, waving his big arms up at her. She stuck her hand from the window, waving back, and when she pulled her hand out she could see that he was motioning her to join him in the garden. Waving at him again to signal that she understood, she grabbed her cloak off the peg and fled her chamber.

Giddy with excitement, Kathalin took the stairs too fast and nearly tripped on her way down. The keep was dark as she made her way down to the entry level where the Tender of the Keep sat huddled up against the fire in her small room near the entry door. When the woman saw Kathalin, she stood up, tossed off the blanket that had been over her shoulders, and made her way over to the iron gate, unlocking it so Kathalin could leave. Kathalin bolted outside once the gate opened and dashed off in the direction of the walled garden.

The wind was picking up and big, fat, freezing drops of rain were falling as she rushed to the gate of the garden, only to be met by Gates. He was already there, opening it, and she threw herself into his arms as she entered. Gates held her tightly, off the ground and aloft in his arms, and carried her over to a corner of the walled garden where eyes from the keep could not see them. He needed, and wanted, privacy. Before she could open her mouth to speak, he slanted his lips over hers and kissed her deeply.