shadow and lace (13 page)

"I prefer ladies who throw themselves at my chin. And quite effectively, I might add." He rubbed his smooth chin as if the memory still stung.

Rowena bit back a smile. His winsome grin was hard to resist. "I shan't beg forgiveness if that is what you await."

"I would wait an eternity for one plea from you."

He would have to wait, for at that moment Gareth entered the hall from the bailey. He came not with the laughing group of knights Rowena had expected, but alone. He stood head and shoulders over most of the men in the hall. His demeanor was not that of the jovial host but of a stranger, his stiffened shoulders defensive to the point of arrogance. Was it Rowena's imagination or did the laughter grow shriller and the silences more pointed? The strumming of Mortimer's fingers against the lutestrings took on new violence, as if to fill the void with music. Gareth took the gobletoffered from a lady's hand and raised it in a mocking toast to the minstrel.

After he drank, Gareth lifted the lady's hand to his lips. She curtsied as he kissed her palm. Pale blond strands of hair escaped her silver wimple and Rowena recognized Lady Alise.

Gareth's dark head blurred before her eyes. A knot of unfamiliar hunger tightened her belly. This hunger was subtle and piercing, twisting like a thousand tiny daggers in her gut. Blaine watched her face, his caramel-colored eyes dispassionate.

Gareth lifted his head and glanced up at the gallery. Rowena threw herself behind the column, pushing her back to it as if she might sink into the wood and disappear. She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking she must be mad. How could she have let Marlys dress her like some mummer's dummy to gain Gareth's attention? Gareth's attention was the last thing she needed.

She gathered her skirts to flee, but before she could, Blaine's hand caught her wrist. "Shall we dance, milady squire?" He lifted one eyebrow in a challenge, his lips warm against the racing pulse in her wrist.

Rowena snatched her hand back, and for a gratifying instant thought Blaine was going to duck. Instead, he turned his dip into a mocking bow, the sweep of his hand motioning her toward the stairs.

The ballad swept Mortimer's voice high enough to escape its nasal tones. A lady in the corner wept prettily at the bittersweet tale of a peasant girl taken and forsaken by a philandering knight. The roast mutton and boar spread on the table against the wall were increasingly ignored for the casks of warm ale tapped on the hearth. A pall of fashionable sadness held the crowd rapt as Mortimer's voice soared in a triumph that would be lost to stupor by morning.

Gareth gently dried Alise's tears with the hem of her train. As the last notes echoed through the sniffs and applause, Rowena glided down the stairs, her sleeves flowing behind her like a separate entity. Blaine held her arm with a carefully crafted expression of delight and guilt.

A curious murmur filled the silence. Marlys took two steps toward them, then stopped, her long arms hanging loosely at her sides. At the foot of the steps, Blaine faced Rowena with a sweeping bow. She sank to a curtsy at his feet.

When Gareth drew away from Alise, the sight that greeted him was a regal figure kneeling in a billowing cloud of velvet at Blaine's feet. The peacock blue of her dress stained his vision. His goblet clanked to the stones, spattering burgundy wine over the lavender train of Alise's gown. He rose as if drugged, not realizing every eye in the hall was locked on him.

His hand closed on Rowena's ermine-trimmed sleeve, finding the arm within. His fingers dug like steel into her warm flesh. Gentle blue eyes smothered in a sultry outline of kohl blinked up at him.

"What in the name of God are you doing?" he demanded, his voice harsh in the sudden silence.

Caught in his grasp, Rowena bit her lower lip to control its trembling. "Milord, I came to the feast. You did not forbid me to attend."

He shook her. "Where did you find these things?"

"I—we—" Rowena's gaze found Marlys against the wall. She was staring at her boots. The bile of betrayal rose in Rowena's throat. She stared into Gareth's eyes, choosing silence as her only plea.

Gareth released her arm. Blaine's hand supported her back as her knees betrayed her.

Gareth's face was suffused with red. "You look ridiculous." He snatched the wimple and coif from her head and hurled it to the floor.

Rowena paled as if he had struck her. Her hair fell to her shoulders, lank and dull from the weight of the wimple. She looked around her, taking in at a glance the ashen brows and unadorned eyes of the ladies. The back of her hand lifted to her cheek. Crimson smudged her knuckles like a bruise of blood. Into the silence fell a nervous titter of laughter. Then another.

With spine straight, Rowena lowered her eyes and curtsied to Gareth. "Forgive me, milord. I have lived too long outside the realm of current fashion. I will not trouble you again."

Her skirts felt trimmed in lead as she gathered them in her hands. The crowd parted to let her through, their snickers dying, leaving Gareth to face Blaine's smirk. Blaine took a goblet from a servant's tray and pressed it into Gareth's hand.

"Drink, my friend. 'Tis your feast, after all."

The heat of the goblet warmed Gareth's hand. He swirled the amber liquid around the rim before draining it and reaching for another.

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Rowena broke into a run, ignoring the curious glances of the stragglers in the bailey. As she fled across the drawbridge, Mortimer's lutestrings leaped into song, pounding out a rhythm for her flight to follow. Bursts of laughter chased her through the courtyard. Tears streaked her cheeks, staining the pristine blue of the dress with crimson rivulets. Her train caught on a stray stake, and she ripped it loose, taking perverse satisfaction in the shredding of the costly velvet.

"Rowena!" came a cry, hoarse and breathless behind her.

She paused at the outer wall, impaled by a slanting beam of moonlight. The cry came again, nearer this time. She flung herself forward, her feet caught in a lilting cadence that propelled her without a beat of hesitation through the blocks of shadow cast by the towers. She passed into the list. Three more strides, and the forest would be hers.

"Rowena!"

The note of unfamiliar pleading weighted her feet. She stumbled to a halt, resting her hands on her knees.

Moonlight bathed the deserted list. Footsteps crunched on the dead grass, the only sound except for the muted nickering of the horses in the nearby stable. Marlys stood just inside the gate. Her eyes were veiled by a web of hair as she took a step toward Rowena. Rowena inched toward the darkness of the forest as smoothly as a doe poised for flight.

Marlys raised one hand. "Please. Don't. I never intended—"

Rowena's voice cut like flint. "What did you intend?"

Marlys shook her head. "I don't know. Not that." She sank down on the chest against the wall, dragging a hand through her hair. " 'Twas a harmless bit of mischief—a prank."

"Your brother did not find your humor to his liking."

"Gareth has found little humor to his liking for a very long time." Marlys absently rolled her feet over the lances piled in the grass below the chest.

"Why did he look at me that way? Did he bear your stepmother no fondness?"

Marlys threw back her shaggy head to the moon with a harsh laugh. "He bore her all fondness."

Rowena crept nearer. "Then it pained him to be reminded of her?"

"When Gareth was twelve, my father brought our new mother to Caerleon. She was younger than Father—always laughing and gay. Like a vivacious angel sent to sweeten our lives."

Marlys gave the lances a vicious kick, scattering them in the grass. Rowena was too lost in Marlys's story to heed the painful thud of a lance against her ankle.

Marlys's voice lowered. "Her sweetness held only poison. Gareth was barely out of the first flush of boyhood, yet she was captivated by his smooth skin, his innocence. When my father was called away to help King Edward fight the Welsh, she begged him not to send Gareth to Blaine's father for fostering as was the custom. Instead, she had Blaine sent here. She undertook their training as pages herself." Marlys met Rowena's gaze with uncompromising candor. "She taught Blaine courtesy. She taught Gareth everything else."

Rowena held out a hand to stop the torrent of words that threatened to come spilling from Marlys's lips, but it was too late.

"So at the tender age of fourteen, my brother suffered the guilt of loving his father's wife. When Blaine's father brought word of my father's death from a poisoned arrow wound, Gareth went to her to tell her he had begged the priest for forgiveness for both of their souls. He found her in her bower in the embrace of one of my father's knights. My father still lay on a muddy Welsh battlefield, his flesh not yet cold." Marlys jerked up one of the lances and paced the list like a caged wolf.

Rowena sank down in the grass, fingering the comforting contours of the lance beside her. "What did Gareth do?" she asked softly.

Marlys spun around. The gleam of one eye shone eerily triumphant through a mat of hair. "There's the question. You see—no one knows. They found her the next morn with Gareth's sword through her heart. Elayne's fingers still lay in the pool of blood she had drawn from to trace Gareth's name on the bedclothes beside her."

The broken words of a haunting melody tore through Rowena's brain:

The fair Elayne

Unfairly slain

Her faithless hand

Stilled by a name.

Elayne
. Rowena rested her forehead on her palm. Her brow felt cool and clammy. Her fingers plucked fretfully at the velvet skirt as she raised her head.

"You put me in her garments," she said calmly.

Marlys stood in a shaft of moonlight, leaning on the lance like a staff. "I did not intend—"

"You put me in her garments," Rowena repeated, louder this time. She stood in one fluid motion, the lance finding a place in her sweating palm.

"Ro, I would not have—"

"You made him look at me and see her. How he must hate me…"

The pain of Gareth's censure amazed her. Fury swept the dazed curtain from her eyes. Marlys barely had time to bring the lance across her body as a shield before Rowena charged her. The solid thwack of wood meeting wood echoed through the deserted list. Marlys stumbled backward, keeping her footing by the barest of chance. Rowena did not pause to question the source of this terrible anguish. With a roar of rage more animal than human, she lunged forward, hurtling all of her weight into the charge. Marlys's lance splintered beneath hers with a deafening crack. Marlys fell backward, her body trapped beneath Rowena's weight, her breath paralyzed by the pressure of the lance laid across her windpipe. The fall had flung back Marlys's hair, baring her face to the merciless moonlight.

Rowena had never stopped wondering why Marlys took such care to keep her face veiled. Her imagination had provided scores of romantic stories involving terrible burns or disfiguring scars. The truth was far worse.

Marlys was beautiful.

The rugged imperfections of Gareth's features had been smoothed and refined in his sister. Square of jaw and high of cheekbone, Marlys glared at Rowena, her dark eyes sparkling like chips of obsidian in the moonlight. Her full lips tightened to a proud line. The tangled fall of hair hid a woman that made the Lady Alise appear an insipid imitation of what God intended a woman to be. Rowena's eyes shifted to bewildered blue as the lance went limp in her hands.

"Why?" She whispered, unsure herself of the question she asked.

Marlys gave her a shove; and Rowena rolled to the side without protest. Marlys sat up, scooting around so her back was to Rowena. Once again her hair hung in a lank curtain over her face. By the time she could speak without her voice cracking, Rowena was gone.

Rowena tore off the dead woman's kirtle as she ran, shedding layer after layer of velvet sodden with the stain of Marlys's betrayal. She clawed at the embroidered bodice until it ripped beneath her nails. A bush shuddered beneath the weight of the camlet under-gown. She flung aside the golden girdle as heedlessly as the silken kerchief. Stripped to her thin linen chemise, she flew through the forest, dodging the tree trunks with a flawless grace born from the wings of freedom. She was free. Free as she had been before Gareth had come to Revelwood. Nothing could stop her now. Not Gareth, and not even Papa. No threats. No promises.

Ignoring the twigs slapping her face, she fled deeper into the forest, leaving behind the dying leaves for a stand of pine. Cone-laden boughs admitted the moonlight in dappled patches. She stopped, feeling the chill of the November air against her heated skin for the first time. Gooseflesh prickled her arms at the eerie creak of branch against branch. Caught in the whisper of the wind, the thin trunks swayed to and fro in the ghostly moonlight.

She jerked off the satin slippers and sprang forward. Her bare feet crunched on the prickly needles. Only when she came to the edge of the copse did she stop, her arm flung around the rough bark of a pine. A rumble deeper than the wind warned her. Rushing out of the ground and into a pool silvered with moonlight flowed a fresh spring.