shadow and lace (15 page)

Gareth's teeth gleamed through his dark beard as he met Rowena's gaze over the stallion's head. "Before I could break Folio, I had to teach him to trust me."

Rowena picked at a patch of sap on her chemise to hide the effect of a smile that held no mockery. Gareth gathered his belongings and sheathed his sword. He mounted. She stood awkwardly, wondering if she was to be left alone in the vast forest as punishment for her flight.

Folio pranced forward under the invisible rein of Gareth's control. Rowena held her feet steady, refusing to flinch.

"Gareth?"

She looked up at him, not realizing it was the first time she had said his name without prefacing it with "milord" or "sir." To Gareth, it held the ring of music.

His knees tightened. Folio tossed his head. "What is it?" Gareth said harshly to hide her effect on him.

"God does not fight on the side of the guilty. If you have won every challenge to your honor, does that not mean you are innocent?"

Gareth stared down at her, the well of silence deepening between them.

He held out his arm to her. Rowena clasped his forearm and found herself mounted on Folio, sitting sideways behind Gareth.

The nearness of his warmth lent a dangerous edge to his soft words. "Don't be so quick to exonerate me, Rowena. I've killed men who've done nothing but accuse me of being a murderer."

"And bedded their widows?"

He did not reply. He urged the horse up the uneven terrain of the hillside and did not betray himself with so much as a shiver when Rowena's arms crept around his waist.

Blaine was sitting in the bailey with his back to the wall when Folio came walking into the courtyard. The merriment within the castle had long ago died to broken snores. He lowered the damp rag from his split lip and squinted through the eye that was not swollen shut. Rowena's cheek rested against Gareth's back. Her eyes were closed. She murmured a sleepy refrain as Gareth slid off the horse with one arm held behind him to keep her from falling. Then his hands caught beneath her arms and drew her to her feet.

She opened her eyes. The untarnished emotion within their blue depths sent a thrill of pure lust shooting through Blaine. He climbed to his feet, the ache of his battered knee forgotten in the harder ache of his groin. Rowena's eyes drifted closed again, and she swayed in Gareth's embrace. Blaine started forward, but Gareth's furtive glance around the bailey stopped him in the shadows. Rowena never felt the brush of Gareth's lips against her temple. Blaine sank against the wall as Gareth scooped Rowena into his arms and carried her into the castle.

Blaine rolled his eyes skyward with a groan. A yellow stab of light flickered in the tower on the other side of the bailey. His eyes narrowed, fixing on the unshuttered window where a dark and shaggy head loomed behind the flame. With a crash, the shutter slammed, and Blaine threw back his head and laughed aloud until blood from his torn lip trickled down his chin.

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The first snowflakes of winter came spinning out of a sky laden with gray. They darted and spun on an icy wind to be captured by the castle walls and sent drifting into the bailey. The doors of Caerleon were flung open. Knights and ladies bundled in wool and ermine spilled into the courtyard, their laughter ringing like bells in the crisp air as they turned their faces skyward. Brittle bits of snow tapped their flushed cheeks. They opened their mouths hungrily to catch the flakes on their tongues.

As the snow frosted the brown grass, then carpeted it in white, the men snuck up behind one another and shoved handfuls of snow down tunics. Someone found the chest of lances in the list and soon mock tournaments were being held with the men sliding on the slick grass beneath the snow.

Rowena slipped out of the castle behind the others. She pressed herself to the wall, wondering if the nobility were not tinged with madness. Snow had never meant joy to her. Snow had meant a winter trapped inside a dark castle with drifts piled so high against the doors that they could not be opened from December to March. Snow had meant one rag of a coverlet spread over nine people and nothing but raw turnips and Irwin's tales to nibble on through the short days and endless nights. Snow had meant bowls of soup flavored more with water than barley.

As Gareth had predicted, Blaine and his retinue settled themselves at Caerleon and proceeded to eat up the stores of years. Dunnla ordered about villeins summoned from the village, frightening them into fits with her bellowing. Gridmore led an alarming number of pages into stone walls and onto window ledges before they could be rescued. Blaine lounged around the castle, posturing like a satisfied cat, ever hungry for new entertainment.

Traveling troupes, quick to hear rumors of Blaine's largesse with gold coins, flocked to the castle. Mummers were followed by puppeteers, acrobats by rope dancers, and troubadours by a sword swallower.

The snow brought with it a fresh entertainment and infused the courtyard with joy. Rowena hugged herself, stifling a shiver. She wore no mantle, but only a shapeless cotte of white wool. She had learned well the value of simple garments on the night of the first feast. She had no desire to fuel the whispers spoken behind the sleeves of the ladies. They knew she shared Gareth's bedchamber. Whether she was his leman or a glorified maid kept to stir the fire, no one knew. Gareth treated her with nothing but distant courtesy in front of them. Or alone with her.

The only time Gareth showed any interest in her at all was when Sir Blaine approached. Then he would spring from the very walls to inquire about her writing lessons or ask if her porridge had suited her that morn. It confused her and infuriated Blaine, whose courtesy grew to terrifying proportions when he was angry. She would stammer a reply with all the grace of the village idiot and stumble over her own feet to escape them both.

The snow billowed down in a deepening curtain of white, frosting beards and capping the turrets in a pearly blanket. Across the bailey a spray of snow shot into the air as Marlys tusseled with a chubby squire. His howls for mercy drew a smile from Rowena. Snow caught on her eyelashes and melted like tears down her cheeks. She had been watching Gareth for several minutes with growing disquiet.

Lady Alise knelt at his feet. She scooped a swath of snow into her satin gloves, her ferret-trimmed pelisse spread around her in rippling elegance. She lifted her face to Gareth, her delicate features aglow with laughter. He offered her his hand, and she took it. He ducked as she leaped to her feet, blowing snow like sparks of moondust in his face. Then she gathered her skirts and dodged behind a squealing lady as Gareth started after her with a growl. Across the bailey, his gaze met Rowena's.

He straightened and lifted a black-gloved hand in greeting. Rowena managed a wince of a smile before slipping back into the shadows of the keep. Her feet carried her to the kitchen, where she plopped down on the bench and rested her chin on her hands.

"Half frozen, are ya?" Dunnla wailed in her ear.

Rowena didn't even jump as Dunnla slammed a bowl of lentil stew on the table. Rowena stared into its bubbling depths, then pushed it away. She had seen Gareth's smile fade when he saw her. Why did he keep her around if he detested her so? She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them. She did not see Gareth pause in the doorway or Dunnla shake a spoon at him. When she lifted her head, the doorway was empty and Dunnla was bellowing a tune about the gruesome end of a lusty knight.

Rowena huddled on the lowest stair in the hall, wrapped in a musty pelt. Icy gusts rattled the shutters against the stones. When the shutters resisted the battering siege, the wind went wailing around the ramparts in furious protest. The eerie wail rose to a howl, and Rowena signed the cross on her breast beneath the pelt.

At last the wind sated itself by shooting blasts of cold through the arrow slits. Even the richness of Gareth's keep could not halt the attack of England's winter.

A week ago the sky had begun to spill new snow. Rowena had gathered on the parapet walk with the others to marvel at the size and beauty of the snow-flakes. Within minutes every tower carried a frosting of white until the castle itself looked as if it had been fashioned of snow by a giant child with an artist's hand. The lash of the wind soon drove them inside. The men escorted the women down the winding stairs with forced jocularity, but beneath their smiles, Rowena saw the strain of frowns. The murmur of "blizzard" passed between them like some dreadful incantation.

By dawn of this, the seventh day, Rowena could see no more than a hand's length in front of her from any window in the castle. The world darkened to whirling white as the invisible sky dumped snow into the merciless hands of the wind. Snow billowed around the ramparts, rolling into ice-capped drifts at every wall. Gareth's guests wandered to the great hall without being summoned, trying to ignore the sharp gestures and raised voices of Gareth and Blaine at the hearth.

Finally Blaine lifted a finger for attention, his smile deadly sweet. "Our host has wracked his mind for a way to relieve our tedium and provide us an entertainment on this grim day. Every man in the castle is to join in a hunt to bring back meat for tonight's feast."

A halfhearted cheer went up from the men. The Lady Alise pressed a kerchief to her trembling lips. Gareth's face was set in grim lines.

Woolen greaves and fur vests were fetched by the armloads and tossed in a heap on the rugs. The men shifted from foot to foot like restless children as the women bundled them into cloaks and wound their capuchins into hoods. They tossed challenges and taunts across the hall to keep the silence from closing in. Shrill laughter rang out as the women pressed kisses of luck on clammy brows. A matronly woman patted her husband's rump as he turned to go. A freckled girl no older than Rowena pressed her kerchief into a knight's hand.

"Have you no favor for me, sweet Rowena?" Blaine whispered. He had crept up behind her as silently as a cat. A fur cap hung jauntily over one ear.

"What might these favors indicate?"

Blaine placed a hand over his heart and blinked win-ningly. " Tis a pledge of eternal love from a lady I adore."

Rowena glanced down. Her simple cotte was unadorned by girdle or kerchief. "I fear I have no such favor to give."

"I beg you. Mayhaps a kiss then, one memory of your soft lips. Pray do not send me to an icy grave with naught."

Rose stained Rowena's cheeks. She swayed backward as he leaned forward.

"Stand aside, Blaine, or I shall give you the favor of my lance against your brow." A bear with a muffled growl came clumping down the stairs between them.

Blaine leaped backward, giving the shaggy giant a wide berth. A woman screamed, and all eyes turned to the bottom of the stairs. Bound in ragged pelts from ankle to nose, Marlys stomped into the hall wearing what could only be kitchen trays strapped to her feet with leather thongs.

Gareth crossed the hall to meet her and a hissed but heated exchange followed. Marlys ended it by hurling her lance across the hall. A page ducked, his face ashen as the lance impaled the oaken beam he had been leaning against. Rowena flinched as Marlys proceeded to tell Gareth loudly and explicitly what he could do with his hunt. She grabbed a flagon of ale and stomped out of the hall, her curses ringing behind her.

Blaine shrugged his wiry shoulders into a vest. "What does he expect? He lets her run wild like a beast. A good thrashing might cure her ill temper."

A nearby squire chortled. "Or a good—"

Rowena cleared her throat. The squire met her level gaze and slunk away. Rowena had no idea why she should be defending Marlys, though she supposed Marlys and Gareth were the only family she had now.

At Gareth's signal, two men wrenched open the door. The silence everyone had feared fell over the hall.

A solid mound of white covered the doorway. The muffled scream of the wind behind it shielded the nervous beat of a hundred hearts. The men stood as if frozen themselves until Gareth's cry flung them into movement.

"Lances! Bring all the lances you can find."

Lances were brought amidst excited jabber. The women stood back with clasped hands as the men stabbed the snowy beast. The snow collapsed in a powdery avalanche. A cheer went up. A rush of arctic wind and blinding snow shot into the hall. Last embraces were exchanged. Then, with Gareth in the lead, the men climbed over the crumbling hill in the doorway and disappeared into the white.

Rowena turned and ran up the stairs. She flew down the long corridors, through a squat hall, and up a narrow spiral staircase she thought would never end. Her harsh breathing sent puffs of fog into the stale air.

She burst into the north tower and stumbled to her knees at the bottom of a narrow window. Her stiff fingers tugged at the shutter latch, but the latch held. Too cold to feel her knuckles tear against the rough wood, she rammed both fists against the shutter. With a crack of protest, it flew open.

The burst of cold air and the dizzying height of the tower knocked Rowena backward. Icy flecks of snow blinded her, melting to tears beneath her eyelids. She rubbed them away. Gripping the icy stone windowsill with both hands, she leaned into the blizzard. Her eyes narrowed against the wind, and her fingers went numb. Squinting, she could make out blurred shapes creeping down the drawbridge far below. The man at the head of the hunting party held all of her attention. The wind whipped from the north, hiding him from her view for an agonizing second, before the straggling line reappeared. Rowena leaned out farther, her hungry gaze following Gareth until her hair hardened to icy strands and the last dark shape disappeared into the crystalline forest.