Simon's Lady (11 page)

The bed occupied the whole of the long wall. Its frame looked sturdy, but Gwyneth guessed that the mattress needed a month’s airing, while the bed curtains were beyond cleaning and needed to be burned. Beside the bed was a chair, a minor luxury except that it sat at an angle, missing one leg. The whole of the room cried out for a scrub brush, lye and a great flush of water.

The carved chest beside the door to the balcony captured her interest. She bent down in such a way as to avoid having her knees come into contact with the floor, to inspect what might be within the chest in the way of linens. There were some moth-eaten remnants of what might have been blankets, but as she gingerly picked them up, they crumbled at her touch. In her excavation, she came upon the curiosity of a little mirror encircled by a badly tarnished silver frame. She held the mirror up and looked into it. Her attention was not captured by her own image, which she had only rarely seen, but with the scene that unfolded behind her.

Ermina, seeing Gwyneth’s back turned, had dropped her pretense of cleaning and had gone to the door that led to Beresford’s chamber. In the reflection, Gwyneth saw her lift the curtain that separated the two rooms in the manner of a whore lifting her skirts. She heard Beresford’s movements momentarily halt, and she saw Ermina strike a pose that even in the dim light Gwyneth had no difficulty interpreting. She was left to imagine the gesture Beresford made in response, for Ermina let the curtain drop with a huff, but not before she had sent Beresford a bold, pouty look of purest desire.

Gwyneth thought,
But of course!
She put the little mirror back in the chest, closed the lid, and rose from her position. She left the chamber to stand on the balcony and wait for Beresford. She did not even look into his chamber through the open door. She was considering, in a vague sort of way, the visible desire of this strumpet for the man she herself was to wed, when Beresford was suddenly next to her on the balcony.

He asked, “Do you wish to see my chamber now?”

Gwyneth composed her face and looked down modestly. “It would not be proper, sire.”

Beresford was vexed that he had been put to so much bother with the piles of clothing for nothing and was prevented from commenting rudely on her intrusion in his household only by the appearance of Ermina on the balcony.

Gwyneth reappraised the maid in relation to Beresford and felt the force of Ermina’s dislike for her down to her toes. She was unmoved, however, and asked the woman to fetch a broom and begin sweeping the mistress’s chambers at once. When Ermina replied cheekily that there was no broom at hand, Gwyneth informed her that she had seen one in a room off the balcony, third door on the right. When Gwyneth again asked her to get it, Ermina turned to her master. Beresford gestured with his head that she should fetch the broom.

“Thank you so much for your time, my lord,” Gwyneth said when she had gone. “Ermina will spend the rest of the day cleaning my chamber.” She smiled, cool and confident. “And I will find her a position in another household before I move in.”

“A position in another household?” Beresford repeated blankly. “Why?”

“What would you do with a knight-in-training who did not live up to your standards?”

Beresford looked around him, frowning, wondering whether the house had not become a little disheveled in the last year or two. He was honest enough to say, “I would have him turned off.”

“Exactly,” Gwyneth said. “Ermina is most unsuitable, in every way, and she shall not be here when I am mistress. Of course, until then, I have no cause or reason to interfere with your arrangements. For the next four days, she may stay here and do for you what she has always done,” she added pointedly.

She asked Beresford to escort her to the door. Not many minutes later, she had left with her ladies and the two soldiers, leaving him to wonder
How did she do that?
He could tell from the inflection in her voice and the expression on her face that she knew exactly what Ermina had always done for him. He was amazed, because just as the maid had conveyed to him the offer of her body, he had been able to see from his chamber that Gwyneth’s back had been turned away from them and that she was bent over Roesia’s linen chest. He considered the unsettling possibility that all women naturally knew these things. Then he remembered that Roesia had never seemed to know about his casual women and had not seemed to care. Or perhaps, he suddenly realized, it was rather that he had not cared if Roesia knew and did not know if she cared.

But Gwyneth…. It might well have been some feminine notion of housekeeping standards that caused her to turn Ermina away. And it might well have been coincidence, the evening before, that had brought her with Fortescue to the battlements at the very moment he had caught Lady Chester in his arms in full view of Adela. The way Rosalyn had looked up at him at just that moment had given him pause, and it would have put him at a disadvantage with Adela if he had given in to the impulse to take advantage of what she was so plainly offering him. When he had considered it later, it had seemed, in fact, that Rosalyn
wished
to put him at a disadvantage with Adela, if not also with Gwyneth.

He shook his head and decided that none of it was worth thinking about. None of it. Not Rosalyn. Not Ermina. Not Gwyneth. He was in his home, in command of his men, and he knew what he had to do to release the energies shooting through him.

He walked back on to the field where the men, in absence of their leader, had become slack in their exercises. In any case, they had been rather more interested in witnessing the progress of the threesome on the balcony.

Beresford bent down easily and retrieved the sword he had earlier relinquished. He slashed the air several times, flexed his shoulders then smiled at the circle of very dirty, sweaty men.

“Any takers?”

Two young men were foolish enough to try their skill against him and were fortunate to end the encounter still able to stand, although their self-respect was severely drubbed into the dust of the disreputable courtyard.

Over the next four days, Beresford spent a good deal more time at the Tower than he was used to spending or even cared to spend. He did not understand how a vital man in his prime could pass day after day within doors, or at least within castle walls, talking, eating, strolling, politicking. Certainly, there was tournament practice in the yard before the lieutenants’ lodgings, but it lacked scrappiness, and he thought it pretty tame sport.

However, crossing swords with the castle guard was a good deal more entertaining than being cornered in the great hall by any number of court ladies whose names were a jumble in his brain. It reminded him of the period following Roesia’s death, when it had seemed that every woman, known and unknown to him, had something to say to him or do for him. Of course, he was accepting congratulations now and not sympathy, but the unpleasant parallel between the two occasions—Roesia’s funeral and his marriage to Gwyneth—struck him forcibly. Mostly, he found it all boring, except for those times when he was just plain aggravated by the teasing of many of his oldest friends, who had taken an unprecedented interest in his personal life.

He suspected that this interest stemmed principally from the particular attractions of his wife-to-be. He did not suspect that his own perceived distaste for the marriage had contributed to the interest in her, nor did he guess that testing the limits of his potential jealousy added piquancy to the pursuit. Whatever else he did or did not guess, he had determined not to let Geoffrey of Senlis out of his sight when Gwyneth was near.

As for Gwyneth, during those four days, he saw her on occasion in the course of his normal movements through the castle, but never privately; and he spoke to her not at all apart from public moments at mealtimes. He found these occasions most unsatisfactory. Since the announcement of their betrothal, they had had to continue to sit at the head table, which not only constrained their conversation but also made them targets for an endless stream of well-wishers and for all sorts of other courtly annoyances.

On the last evening before their wedding, as supper was coming to an end, he became aware that some fool minstrel was standing before him singing of an even more foolish man who languished with love for his lady. Beresford’s impulse was to relieve the fool of his lute and crush that instrument of mawkish torture in his bare hands, but it occurred to him that such an efficient action might be deemed “unsubtle.” He considered instead explaining kindly to the fool that the musical drivel was giving him a stomach cramp as he was trying to digest his meal, but decided that the minstrel was really so bad that he deserved no such explanation.

Beresford settled for the direct command to the fool to go away, accompanied by a gesture that dismissed him to the other end of the table.

This brought Gwyneth’s head around, and he looked at her, expecting to be thanked. She did not thank him, but merely arched one brow, as if somehow amused. He guessed that, all in all, she was pleased he had sent the musical idiot away.

“He’s gone,” Beresford said, feeling self-satisfied.

“Yes, and it was very considerate of you,” she replied, “to send the minstrel to the other end of the table. I believe that he was performing the king’s favorite song.”

She suppressed her desire to laugh out loud at the expression on Beresford’s face as he assimilated this news. After a moment, he said, “Did you wish to hear the song, my lady?”

Gwyneth shook her head, smiling, for she was in a strangely equitable mood this evening. “I heard it once yesterday and once the day before, and I’m sure I’ll have another opportunity at tomorrow evening’s festivities.”

At this mention of the morrow’s celebrations, Beresford grunted. Then, suddenly, he rose from the bench and looked down at her. He said, “Come.”

Gwyneth blinked at his abruptness and wondered, despite his plain words, what exactly he might mean. He had not once sought out her company or requested to see her alone at any time since first meeting her. “Leave the hall?” she asked cautiously.

He looked around. “It’s crowded in here. I thought we might go outside.” He stretched out his hand to help her up from the bench.

She laid her hand in his and asked, “Do you wish to take a turn on the battlements?”

He bit off a hard laugh that held a trace of self-mockery. “No, not the battlements,” he answered, drawing her to her feet. “I’d rather go down to the yard.”

“Ah, the pleasance, then,” she said, standing. But he did not seem to have had the gardens on his mind. It would have amused her to learn just where he had intended taking her. The archery pit? The slaughterhouse? But she did not choose to put him on the spot.

His expression became bemused then a little fixed. “Yes, to the pleasance,” he said at last. He let go of her hand, gracelessly, as usual. He extended his wrist—grudgingly, she thought—to escort her out of the hall.

They stopped first at Stephen’s chair, as was proper, to excuse themselves from the king’s presence. Stephen bestowed on them an absent nod, after which they made their way through the hall, stopping frequently to respond to the variety of greetings directed their way. They encountered, among others, Johanna, Beresford’s cousin, whose acquaintance Gwyneth had cultivated during the past days.

Johanna was, in part, responsible for Gwyneth’s equitable mood this evening. After she had left Beresford at the door to his house four days earlier, her opinion of him had sunk so far into the ground that she had thought it likely to remain there forever, deeply buried. However, earlier this very afternoon, she had been startled to see Beresford across the hall bending down on one knee, listening attentively to a little girl who could not have been more than five years old. Everything about him had seemed graceful and courtly.

“That’s little Cristina, a second cousin of mine,” Johanna had said, “and of Simon’s.”

Gwyneth had erased whatever expression she had been wearing at the sight of Beresford so engaged. “Your family is large and extended, it seems,” she had remarked conversationally, unable to take her eyes off the sight of Beresford kneeling before the girl.

“Yes,” Johanna had said, “although very few of us are at court, as you know.” She paused and added, “Cristina adores Simon, for she thinks him a source of indulgence for her every whim and passing thought.”

“And is he?” Gwyneth had asked, glancing at Johanna, surprised and skeptical.

“Of course, else Cristina would not think of him in such terms.”

Johanna had not belabored the point, leaving her intrigued by this very different glimpse of her future husband.

At length Gwyneth and Beresford made their way through the crowd and reached the arched passage by which they would exit. With a humorous turn of mind, Gwyneth imagined that Beresford, from the way he exhaled gustily when they arrived at the stairs, had had enough of the parting chitchat. He ushered Gwyneth in front of him so that she could precede him in the descent.

“You have not returned to my house this week,” he said suddenly to her back.

Her right hand gripped the newel column of the winding stairs. The cool stone felt good against her palm. With her left hand, she lifted her skirts to her ankle. “No,” she answered, keeping her eyes on the tricky stairs as she stepped down, “I have been able to conduct all my household business from the castle.”

“I know.”

At his tone, she permitted herself a smile, which he could not see. She had refused to return to Beresford’s wreck of timber until she was officially mistress, and so had persuaded Adela to provide her with couriers so that she could work effectively from afar. She had not accomplished much beyond retrieving a few items from Beresford’s house that needed her attention before the wedding. Her greatest administrative accomplishment was, of course, the arrangement of Ermina’s new employment, which would begin on the morrow. Was the pretty slattern’s removal from Beresford’s convenient use the cause of his slightly aggrieved “I know”?