shadow and lace (9 page)

He remained in the chair by the fire. There was nothing to do but wait and see if he had baited his trap well enough to awaken some sleeping vestige of honor in Fordyce. Surely even the most indifferent of fathers would not sacrifice a rose like Rowena into his vengeful hands. When the last flame died to a glowing ember, he still sat, watching his captive sleep and wondering if he had made a terrible mistake.

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The familiar fingers of dawn coaxed Rowena from sleep. She snuggled deeper into the furs. Grinning hares bounced across the backs of her closed eyelids. She twitched, believing for a moment that she must strap on her knife and take to the moors to hunt. A shutter creaked. She opened her eyes. Hazy light filtered through the open window, haloing Gareth's dark hair in silver. Rowena sat up, clutching the furs to her chest, forgetting for a moment the modest garment she wore.

Gareth turned at the movement. To her relief, he wore loose fitting chausses, though his chest was still bare. "You may sleep longer if you like," he said. "You were not abed as early as I last night."

"You were resting well when I came to the chamber. I did not see fit to awaken you."

"How thoughtful." His even tone implied the opposite.

Rowena looked away to escape his mocking gaze. Tapestries ringed the walls, their rich burgundies and russets granting an illusion of coziness to the chamber. Directly above her head in a delicately painted mural,the bright, dark eyes of a serpent beguiled a naked and demure Eve.

A loud crunch made her jump. Gareth stood a hand's breadth from her, cradling a half-eaten apple in his palm.

"Fruit?" he asked cheerfully.

Never one to refuse food, Rowena took the apple and snapped a hearty bite out of it. As her eyes glided between Gareth and the serpent, she handed the apple back. He smiled and took another bite before holding out his other hand to her. "Come."

Rowena paled. Had she escaped his attentions in the night only to earn them now? She touched her hair, praying that sleep had left her rumpled and dirty. If Gareth's sparkling eyes were any indication, she was not rumpled enough. She slipped her hand into his, then held her breath as he brought it to his lips. He paused, studying the thin line of calluses marring her palm. His brow furrowed and Rowena feared she had somehow angered him. She knew he must be accustomed to the downy softness of a lady's hand. She would not need dirt or untidy hair to repulse him. She tried to draw back her hand, feeling unaccountably ashamed, but he gently tucked it into the crook of his arm and led her to the window. She followed, intensely aware of the warmth his touch had ignited.

He leaned an elbow on the stone ledge. The apple core fell from his fingers to disappear into the mist below. "Welcome to Caerleon. The grandfather of my grandfather christened it after Uther Pendragon's Caerleon. He was a romantic soul. Quite touched in the head. He adored the Pendragon legend."

"Irwin told me stories of the Pendragon and his court. Your Caerleon must be as lovely as his."

The castle sprawled below was not fashioned of black obsidian as Rowena had fancied in the pouring rain, but of deep gray stone kissed with the wearing of rain and wind. Mist drenched the battlements. Outside the castle walls, the early morning sun slanted through the fog, burning it away in patches to reveal a forest so thick it glistened black instead of green. In the distance, cut off from its hill by a shimmering platter of mist, stood another castle with pennons flying a red and yellow welcome in the ethereal light.

"Ardendonne," Gareth said when he saw her lips part. "I expect to see Blaine's banner come flying over the hill at any moment. His curiosity is insatiable, especially when it involves a comely damsel who scorns his advances."

His gaze strayed from her lips to her eyes. Rowena propped her hip on the ledge and began to braid her hair. The clean strands slipped through her fingers like corn silk.

"Allow me," Gareth said, plucking the coil from her hand. "I thought to provide you no maidservant."

Rowena hardly dared to breathe as his broad fingers intertwined the sections of hair with a deftness that implied an intimacy with womanly grooming she did not care to examine. Such lazy grace in a man of his size was jarring. Rowena stared at the top of his head. His hair was still tousled from sleep.

"Irwin said I was too lazy to tend to my own hair."

"But not too lazy to be up at dawn to hunt the game to stuff his plump face."

Rowena started to nod, then stopped, squirming under a pinprick of disloyalty. "Little Freddie helped me with my braids."

"Hmmm," he said noncommittally. "Would Little Freddie be the gray-eyed gallant who sought to bash me over the head with the cooking kettle?"

Rowena's jaw tightened at the memory. "He would."

Gareth finished one braid and started on the other without a pause. "Tell me, Rowena—has your dearest betrothed ever touched you in an untoward manner?"

Rowena snatched her braid out of his hand. "Indeed not! I'd have cracked his skull if he had."

Gareth bared his white teeth in a smile. "Pray do not crack my skull for asking. You are of an age to marry. 'Twas an honest enough question." He pried the braid from her hand and began to gently undo the damage she had done.

Rowena sniffed, disowning her braid as if it belonged to someone else. " 'Twas an honest enough question coming from you. Perhaps my kin have the moral fortitude your friends lack."

"Trust me, my dear. Moral fortitude does not run rampant in your family."

"I suppose it does in yours? Along with dicing, leaping out of trees at people, and abduction." She glared at the forest, waiting for him to cuff her out the window for her insolence. Fortified by indignation, she drew in a deep breath and announced, "I am experiencing some confusion as to my purpose at Caerleon."

Gareth finished the braid and let it swing against her throat. His teasing tone mocked her anger. "We cannot stand for that, can we? I assume everyone had a purpose at Revelwood."

"Of course," she replied, as if the thought of anyone not having a purpose was ludicrous to her. "I hunt. Little Freddie cooks and weaves. Big Freddie and the boys tend the crops. And Papa…" She fell silent with a puzzled frown.

Gareth's smile was bitter. "Papa squanders away his only daughter to a lecherous nobleman."

"Which returns us to the subject of my purpose here." Her bright blue eyes studied his face. "Am I to be your whore, milord?"

Gareth cleared his throat. He was a man accustomed to wasting a thousand words to arrive at one lucid point in his banter with women. Rowena's forthright-ness disarmed him.

He crossed to the leather gauntlets on the table and began to work a leather thong from its lacings.

She stumbled on, " Tis just that I know more of hunting than whoring. I fear I should be a great disappointment to you."

Gareth bit his tongue as he snapped the thong in two with his teeth. He returned to wrap the ends of Rowena's braids, all laziness banished from his precise motions.

"It might amaze you, my dear, to realize there are an abundance of purposeless ladies—and noblemen—in this world."

It was a feeble comfort and not the answer she deserved, but it was all he could give her. Rowena lowered her eyes before he could read the doubt in them. His fingers tightened for an instant on a silky wisp of her hair.

He was still holding her braid when the door crashed open and Marlys burst into the chamber. "I heard no grunts, moans, or screams so I assumed it was safe to enter." Gareth dropped the braid. Marlys took in the motion with a bitter smile. "How sweet! Is he dressing you? As his squire, I thought 'twas your duty to dress him. Or does he prefer you to undress him?"

"A good morn to you, Marlys." Gareth rose from the window.

Marlys was unarmored and unarmed except for a dirk crammed in her belt. Her black tunic and breeches hung in disheveled folds as if she had slept in them. From the awkward patching, Rowena realized the garments must have once belonged to Gareth. Cracked leather gauntlets covered her arms to the elbows, incongruous against the radiant sunlight breaking through the fog to stream over the windowsill. Her hair hung in ratty hanks over her face.

She prowled the chamber like a hungry bear. She picked up Gareth's dagger, feinted twice at the air, then threw it down. Her foot scattered the furs beside the bed. "A bed for your new puppy, brother? A warm pelt and some scraps from your table and I'll wager she'll be at your feet like a bitch in heat, just begging to lap your—"

"Marlys," Gareth warned.

Marlys stepped up to Rowena. The corner of a naughty grin peeped out from behind her hair. "May we pat its pretty little head?"

Before Marlys could move, Rowena's hand shot out and grasped her wrist. A glimmer of doubt touched Marlys's eye. Rowena pulled Marlys's hand down between them before loosing it.

Marlys massaged her wrist under the gauntlet with a wounded pout. "Beware, brother. Your puppy has fangs."

Gareth lifted one eyebrow. "I thought you well warned of that after she knocked you over the head last night."

"Mayhaps the blow dislodged my memory."

"Not overmuch, I hope. I have a task for you, and your memory will serve you well." He threw open a chest and drew a plain black tunic over his head. He scrounged deeper in the chest and came up wielding a tiny silver flute. "What are your interests, Rowena? Music? Embroidery? Dancing?"

Rowena looked puzzled. She knew of no interests except the gallant pursuit of food for their table. Gareth waved a scrap of linen embroidered with dancing pheasants beneath her nose.

"Pheasant stew," she said suddenly. "That holds my interest."

The scrap of fabric went limp. Gareth's eyebrows drew together in a forbidding line. He returned to the chest. "You mentioned Irwin telling you tales. Are you fond of the chansons, the romances?"

She raised her palms in a shrug. She adored tales of monsters and heroes, but did not realize that was what he had asked her. Gareth gave an exasperated snort. "Are you fond of anything you cannot eat?"

Marlys muttered something under her breath, which earned her a searing glance from her brother. He pulled forth a creamy sheet of parchment, a cow horn, and a feathered quill. "You may put your impertinence to good use, sister. You will teach Rowena to write."

Marlys gagged. "I detest writing. And I detest catering to your doxies. If you must consort with uneducated villeins, could you not hire a priest to undertake their education? I would have thought she'd already know everything necessary for the tasks you have in mind. Some things do come naturally, you know. If she can lay on her back and spread her legs, then she ought to be able to—"

"The lady Rowena is not a peasant. She is the daughter of a baron," Gareth interrupted, watching Rowena turn from pale white to pink to a mild shade of purple. " Tis no fault of her own that her education has been neglected."

Marlys crossed her arms over her chest. "Command the village priest to come teach her. He has been idle too long."

"You know 'tis impossible." Gareth slipped behind her and put his mouth next to where an ear should be. His soft words were audible throughout the chamber. "I suggest you follow my wishes. The next time you ambush me, I might forget you are my beloved baby sister and regrettably skewer you."

Marlys's fingers flexed in her gauntlets as Gareth buckled on a silver belt. He started for the door, whistling a jaunty tune. "If you are entertaining notions of his goodness," Marlys snapped at Rowena, "then beware. He may kill you with kindness."

Gareth stopped for a moment, his broad shoulders filling the doorframe. Then he continued on, and Marlys's low laughter flooded the chamber.

Rowena sidled around Marlys, trying to steal a glimpse of the deformity the young girl must be hiding—a twisted lip or perhaps a milky white cataract.

Marlys inclined her head. Her hair fell like a curtain over her anger. "You'd best break your fast," she muttered, "before Dunnla throws your porridge to the hogs."

The memory of snarling dogs tearing at the remains of Ardendonne's feast sent Rowena rushing for the door, Marlys's face forgotten. She hesitated.

Marlys anticipated her question. "Left, right, down, north, left and east. Take care not to get lost. We still haven't found the bones of the last chit who lost her way."

Rowena's eyes widened. She stepped out the door and turned to the right. Marlys's laughter rang after her.

Rowena wandered for an interminable time, trapped in a maze of corridors. She trotted along, out of breath, but refusing to sit down and rest lest they discover her bones months from now, crouched in defeat in some deserted corridor. She found herself at the door of Gareth's chamber twice before stumbling onto the wide stone steps that curled downward into the heart of the castle.

Last night's impression of vast space was only reinforced by the beams of sunlight pouring through the arrow slits: The great hall of Caerleon stood at the base of a square tower three times as large as all of Revel-wood. A vaulted ceiling loomed high above. A faint draft stirred a crested banner suspended from the oaken beams.