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Authors: The Mistress of Rosecliffe

BOOK: Rexanne Becnel
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She smiled at his easy manner. “Two chairs. Or perhaps a bench.” She led him to a bench beside the hearth and seated
herself. Without waiting for an invitation, he sat next to her. Right next to her.
“How did you learn to play the gittern?” she asked, to cover the abrupt case of nerves that beset her.
He shrugged. “I was many years in service in a household. I learned from someone there.”
“Have you been a minstrel ever since?”
“No.”
At that short response she looked up at him. He met her gaze with no hint of apology. Indeed, his deep-set eyes seemed to probe hers. “I am a minstrel now. That is enough to know. And it seems you would mimic my craft. Is it so hard being mistress of a grand castle that you covet a life in the wildwood with only your lute and gittern and pipes to sustain you?”
“No. Not at all. Cannot a woman desire to make music for her own pleasure and that of her family?”
“She can.” Their eyes met and held. He was so near that she felt the heat of his body and heard the rhythmic rush of his breathing. She could see the glint of torchlight in his ebony eyes. His was an overwhelming presence. She had to look away.
“Here,” he said, and offered the gittern to her. “Tuck it under your right arm and grip the neck with your left hand.”
She did as he said and strummed across the five strings, pleased with the harmonious blending of the tones.
“You press down with your fingers on the neck in order to shorten the strings and change the tones. Like this,” he added. He leaned nearer, circling her shoulders with one arm and covering her left hand with his own. Heat rushed through her, burning wherever he touched her, then searing out to every other portion of her body. It was startling and unnerving, and more than a little thrilling.
“’Tis the combination of strings that makes the different sounds,” he murmured, very near her ear. Her heart beat a little faster. He moved her fingers into place. “Press down. Hard.” Then he caught her other hand in his and said, “Strum.”
She did. At the moment, Isolde suspected she would have done anything he told her to, she was that caught up in the spell he’d cast.
But the sound of the strings, still harmonious but in a different
tone from before, brought her back to the moment. She stared at the position of the fingers of her left hand. She had done that? She was utterly delighted.
“You can also pluck the strings with your thumb or your fingers to pick out a melody,” he said. While still holding her fingers in place on the neck of the instrument, he proceeded to pick out a familiar Welsh lullaby with the other.
“Sweetly, sweetly in the night,” she softly sang along in Welsh.
Rhys froze at the sound of his enemy’s daughter singing a Welsh lullaby. He had not expected her to recognize the song, though he realized now how foolish that assumption was. Her mother was Welsh, so of course she would know it. Just as she probably spoke Welsh as well as did he. But that did not make Isolde FitzHugh Welsh.
He released her hands and pulled away from her. “That is enough for tonight.”
She remained bent over his gittern, fitting her fingers as he’d shown her. She strummed, then hummed a little, going back and forth between that one simple chord, and an open one. She seemed completely oblivious to his presence.
He was not oblivious to hers, though. Unwillingly his gaze traced the tilt of her head, the curve of her back. He frowned and yet still noticed the silky sheen of her hair and the pale skin of her nape, where the heavy length parted. He inhaled and caught again the faint scent of lavender and had to force himself to slide away from her.
She was young; she was comely; she was clean. Any man would respond to a woman possessed of those traits, he told himself. That explained his body’s perverse attraction to her. Still, explanation or no, the lust she roused in him was unexpected and he rebelled at the thought. She was a FitzHugh. He hated her and all of her ilk.
But that did nothing to tame the demon beast of desire. She was a woman and he’d been too long without the relief of a woman in his bed.
She strummed and let out a soft chuckle. “This is truly a wondrous instrument.” She tilted her face up to his. “Where did you come by it?”
Again desire struck, more fiercely than before. Her skin
looked so soft. Her eyes were a deep and lustrous gray, and her lips …
He took the gittern from her. “York,” he muttered. He stood. “Enough. I am weary.”
“But you will show me more on the morrow?” she asked as she stood.
He looked away, toward the stout oak doors and their heavy locking bar that leaned idly in a corner. “Yes. Tomorrow,” he agreed.
She cleared her throat. “You and your comrades are free to linger at Rosecliffe a while,” she offered. He did not respond and after a moment she continued. “If you have mending, the seamstresses will tend it. Or laundering. Or leather repairs.” She clasped her Hands in a knot at her waist.
Rhys’s eyes narrowed. She wanted them to stay. That was to his advantage. “I am flattered that you enjoyed our entertainments so well. Perhaps we can delay our journey a few more days,” he conceded. “Do you expect your family to return that soon?”
“No. Alas, they will be gone several more weeks. I do not expect them until just before the turn of the new year.”
“I see.” And so he did. Several weeks provided him more than enough time. “I can promise you no more than a few days.”
She smiled at that, a smile at once innocent and alluring. The simple delight of a girl; the darker satisfaction of a woman. Which was she? Though it was madness, he wanted to find out.
So he stepped nearer, closing the distance between them, and offered the gittern to her. “You may have the free use of my instrument so long as we remain at Rosecliffe.”
“Why, thank you.” She took it carefully into her slender hands. “You must allow me to repay your generosity.”
He gave her a short bow. “Your pleasure is payment enough,” he murmured as he took his leave of her. But soon enough she would repay him, and very well, he told himself as he quit the hall. Three weeks to make Rosecliffe his own.
And the daughter of Rosecliffe? a sharp voice in his head prodded.
He heard the soft notes of the gittern and heard her humming
once more. Mayhap he would make her his, as well. To take the innocence of his enemy’s daughter would be to strike a mortal blow to FitzHugh’s black heart.
And he’d been waiting to do that for twenty years.
ISOLDE WOKE UP SMILING AND KNEW AT ONCE WHY.
Work on the chapel was complete and today she would finish the crucifix. The workmen would move on to the great hall, washing the walls, and painting them in the simple pattern of knots she had designed. By week’s end the seamstresses would complete the new hangings for above the mantel and flanking the entry doors. Her labors were beginning to bear fruit.
More important than all of those, however, was one simple fact: Reevius had agreed to teach her to play the gittern.
She lay still in the deep feather bed, flat on her back, staring up at the heavy damask bed curtains she’d embroidered herself. Purple and a deep forest-green, the bedhangings were her favorite colors. Yet though she stared, she did not really see them. Her thoughts were elsewhere.
She tried to understand what had happened to her last night. A group of minstrels had played for their supper, a group not so different from scores of other such groups who’d come to Rosecliffe.
Yet to her they had been completely different.
A giant. A dwarf. A trained dog.
Then she groaned and closed her eyes, chagrined by her own dishonesty. It was neither Linus nor Gandy who made these minstrels different to her, nor the little dog Cidu. The truth was, it was Reevius. He was the reason she was smiling, even though she could not fathom why. But fathom it or not, she could hardly deny the truth. Not to herself anyway.
A simple minstrel of unknown origin, possessing nothing but a gittern, broad shoulders, and an enthralling voice, had captured her imagination. Skinny Mortimer Halyard had not done it. Nor had any of the several knights and lords’ sons who had made their way to Rosecliffe over the past several years at her father’s behest. But this man whose face she’d not yet fully seen, and who had not even behaved in a particularly friendly manner—he was the one who put this smile on her face and this eagerness in her heart.
She sighed and rolled onto her stomach, feeling twitchy all over. It was ludicrous, of course. An itinerant musician was hardly the sort of man that should appeal to a lord’s daughter, like her. But he did appeal to her. And when he had sat down next to her and guided her hands …
A delicious quiver snaked down her spine and deep into her belly. No other man had ever made her feel that way before.
Then again very few men, save her relatives, had ever touched her hand for so prolonged a contact, and in so familiar a fashion.
She rolled onto her back again, and opened her eyes, staring blindly above her. Was that it? Was the confined life she led at Rosecliffe the reason she’d become so affected by this aloof, bearded minstrel?
She flung back the marten coverlet, dismayed by her own perversity. In truth, this was her father’s fault. If not for his obstinance, she would be in London by now meeting the many important personages gathering there from throughout the kingdom. Had he not been so rigid about Mortimer, she might already have met several eligible young men, men as tall and broad shouldered and bold of eye as any traveling minstrel. Indeed, she might already have found one perfectly suited to her desires.
She sat up and slid her legs over the side of the bed, laughing at a sudden thought. Perhaps she should define her desires more clearly to her father. How would he react if she asked him to find her a man who made her stomach turn over, or one who made her skin prickle with gooseflesh? If her mother was correct, his voice would fail and his ears would turn red should she speak of such things to him. How amusing it would
be to embarrass her stern father with talk of her fleshly desires—desires she’d not even considered until the mysterious Reevius had roused them.
Where had he slept last night? Where was he now? She suddenly needed to know.
In short order she dressed, then hurried down the stairs. The chapel bells pealed as if to announce her. But the hall was empty save for Odo, who shook his head when he spied her. “Morning prayers are about to commence. Father Clemson is frowning, and you know how he goes on and on when he is put out.”
“Yes, yes. I am sorry.”
In the chapel she endured the longer prayers, unmindful of Father Clemson’s petulance. Her mind strayed from his endless sermon as she alternately admired the improvements she’d made and worried for Reevius’s eternal soul. It was one thing to miss services when there were none to be had. But everyone at Rosecliffe attended services, including their visitors. Everyone except minstrels, it seemed.
Afterward the hall was full and noisy as people ate gruel and old bread soaked in goat’s milk and flavored with honey. Where was he? she fretted. Surely they had not left Rosecliffe, not while she yet had his gittern.
The sun approached its zenith before she had any word of Reevius, and then it was merely by chance, for she refused to ask for him.
“ … a great bully boy he is,” the alewife said as she directed the unloading of new barrels outside the butlery.
“And you know what they say of musicians,” her sister, Emelda, said as she muscled one of the barrels to the back edge of the slat-sided cart. The woman grinned. “They have the nimblest fingers and the cleverest touch.”
The two laughed, then bobbed their heads respectfully when they spied Isolde. She nodded and kept on her path to the laundry shed. Inside, however, she fumed. Nimblest fingers? Cleverest touch? Did they speak of Reevius? Surely not.
But then, who else?
Isolde gritted her teeth. Had Emelda learned such things about him firsthand? The woman was rumored to be less than
frugal with her reputation. Is that where Reevius had spent his night?
She marched blindly on to the laundry shed with the pouch of salt for spreading over stains. Afterward she stopped in the kitchen to collect the unused cooking herbs, then returned them to the spice cabinet. She should visit the weavers and the seamstresses, for they required daily exhortations and praise to keep up the quality and pace of their work. But she was hard-pressed to concern herself with any of those tasks.
She halted in the bailey and swept her unhappy gaze across the busy yard. She needed to be alone, to think and work out these strange and confusing feelings that beset her. But there seemed to be no place for solitude. The chief gardener toiled in the herb garden. The guards paced the wall walk. The armorer labored in his shed near the stables. Masons on their scaffolds. The dairy maid in her pens. Everywhere there were men and women, and even children, busy with all the tasks that kept Rosecliffe a safe and pleasant place to live.
She too had her own tasks awaiting her. But she simply could not concentrate on them now. Anyway, it was nearly time for the main meal. Surely he would appear for that.
But he did not. His three companions were there, gathered at the same table, in the back of the hall. But Reevius was not there. Nor was Emelda.
Though. Isolde knew she was behaving like an addlepated fool, she could not repress either her anger or her disappointment, and immediately after the meal, she stormed up to her bedchamber.
Flinging herself upon the bed, she sat down cross-legged, her face set in a scowl. She’d felt these same unreasonable emotions once before, she realized, when she was a child and infatuated with her uncle Jasper. She’d fancied herself in love with him and even envisioned them someday wed. Then Rhonwen had come along and Isolde’s childish dreams had been dashed. She’d behaved like a selfish little brat, as she recalled. Several years later she’d developed a similar tendre for one of her uncle Jasper’s squires. As she remembered it now, she’d sulked for weeks when the cheerful lad had removed to Bailwyn Castle to serve Jasper there.
Now, as she sat in her silent chamber, she grimaced. She
was no longer a child of ten, or thirteen, but a woman of nearly twenty. Surely she’d matured at least a little during the intervening years.
Willing herself to be calm, she tried to understand why she was behaving so—and on account of an itinerant minstrel. She was frustrated by her father’s attempts to arrange a marriage for her. That was the first thing. Then there was the frustration of being left behind while the rest of her family attended the coronation.
But that still did not explain her fascination with this wandering minstrel. Frowning, she planted her chin on her palm, determined to sort out her feelings.
Reevius was young and tall and fit. Very fit. So that explained one aspect of his attractiveness. Plus, he had a poet’s heart, something no knight or young lord of her acquaintance possessed. The men she met cared only for politics and hunting, weapons and horses. But while they practiced their skills at war, Reevius practiced on his gittern.
She sighed, then looked over at the gittern lying upon her trunk. He had coaxed such lovely sounds from the instrument last night. And his deep voice had seemed to vibrate right through her.
She feared, however, that it was more than his physical appeal and his considerable musical talent that attracted her. From the very first time their eyes had met, something had happened. Some emotion she could not explain had passed between them. It was almost as if they had known one another, as if they were kindred spirits come suddenly face-to-face.
Or at least that was how she had felt.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to know what he felt, and so long as he remained absent from the hall, she was not likely ever to learn.
Again she sighed, no longer angry, but just as frustrated as before. Myriad tasks awaited her, but not one of them appealed. Nor, she rationalized, were any of them essential to the smooth operation of the castle. The fact was, the paint on the crucifix needed to dry and all her necessary chores had been accomplished earlier.
Her gaze moved once more to the gittern. Perhaps she would take Reevius’s instrument and go down to the narrow
beach below the north wall. There she would surely find the solitude she sought, and she could experiment with the gittern. By the time Reevius finally returned to the hall to give her the lesson he’d promised, she would already be more competent than he expected. She would impress him, if not with her talent, at least with her enthusiasm.
She slid off the high bed and picked up the hollow wood instrument with reverent hands. Then, determined not to consider why Reevius and Emelda both were missing, and determined not to care if they were together, she made her way down the stairs, across the hall, and through the bailey to the postern gate.
No one stopped her, for the seaward side of Rosecliffe was completely safe. So she made her way down the steep stairs that had been chiseled into the dark cliff, holding Reevius’s gittern with one hand and gripping the rope railing with the other. The wind buffeted her, playful then rough, heavy with the salty scent of fish and damp and seaweed. The stairs let out onto a rocky beach that gave way to gravel and occasional patches of coarse sand. Three broad-beamed fishing boats lay upended on the shore. A fourth bobbed far out on the waves. Two men checking the fish traps. Otherwise, she had the beach to herself.
She looked up at the castle, so high above the cliff. For no logical reason, she did not want the guards looking down on her, so she edged down the narrow beach toward a boulder that jutted up at the sea’s edge. As a child she’d clambered up and over it a thousand times. Sometimes it had been a mountain, other times a ship, and occasionally a terrible sea monster or a fire-breathing dragon. Today, however, it would be shelter, a protective wall keeping the world at bay and allowing her to be the daughter of an ordinary man, instead of a mighty lord. A woman unencumbered by birthright and free, as all Welsh women were, to make her own choice among men.
She removed her shoes and stockings, then holding her skirts high, waited for an ebb in the waves before wading into the ankle-deep surf. It took but seconds to gain the far side of the rock, but even so, the bitter cold of the sea pierced her to the bone.
“Sweet Jesu,” she muttered as she hopped up and down, urging blood back into her poor feet. She settled on a dry spot of sand with her back to the rock, then glanced up in the direction of the castle. Nothing. Only rock and sand, water and sky. She was perfectly alone and satisfaction settled over her. Now to unlock the secrets of the gittern.
How much time passed she did not know. Shadows crept over her sunny cove, for the days were growing shorter. The waves came, stronger and higher, though she had no fear of becoming trapped. Curlews wheeled across the sky, their cries sharp and shrill as they hunted. When finally she looked up, there was no sign of the fishermen in the boat.
She ought to go back, and she would—as soon as she mastered the song she had finally worked out. She bent once more to the five-stringed gittern, grimacing when she formed the chord Reevius had taught her. She hadn’t realized how sore her fingertips had become from the strings.
She pressed them down anyway, and began to hum, using the waves upon the shore for rhythm.
“ … like grains of sand or drops that fill the sea so wide …” The half-formed words to her song trailed away as her attention was drawn by a movement along the shore. Was someone there?
The fishermen, she reassured herself.
She bent again to the gittern, playing the notes and chords, and singing along. This time there were no false starts, no mistakes, and when she reached the final note, she held it an extra long time.

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