Simon's Lady (3 page)

Beresford felt a sudden physical restriction, like a cramp in his sword arm. Recognizing defeat, he lifted his chalice and brought it to his grimacing lips. He did not so much drink the wine as filter it through his teeth. It was very bitter.

At a signal from the king, the barons rose from the table, but they did not immediately leave the council room. Instead, they lingered, speaking of this and that, as was the custom after the conclusion of official business. One or two of the braver barons paused to say a few words to Beresford. The aging Walter Fortescue, along with Cedric of Valmey, who was or was not promised elsewhere, went so far as to wish him well. Lancaster, the ladies’ man, had his mind on the Saint Barnabas Day tourney and engaged Beresford on that topic.

Beresford had risen with the others and was accepting their congratulations with very bad grace. He felt a strong sense of injustice and was hungry for prey.

He found it. “Senlis!” he summoned angrily, his tone bringing his good friend’s head around with a snap. He strode forward and grasped two handfuls of Senlis’s tunic, chest high. Nose-to-nose, he accused, “You
knew,
you cur, and you delivered me into the hands of the king as unsuspecting as a babe!”

Senlis tried to shrug free of Beresford’s grip, but to no avail. “I did not know, Simon!” he protested, torn between laughter and alarm. “Truly I didn’t!”

Beresford wanted to wipe the poorly suppressed grin off his friend’s handsome face. He was within an inch of yielding to the urge when a group of barons overheard the exchange and came to Senlis’s aid.

“No one knew,” Roger Warenne said, seconding Senlis’s assertion.

When Beresford did not immediately release his friend, Lancaster offered, “I thought your summons had to do with some change in the tourney. Why, I was saying as much to Valmey here earlier this afternoon.”

Cedric of Valmey soothed slyly. “Yes, in fact, Lancaster assured me that Adela was calling for a change in plans on the field of contest, but instead you have the honor of marrying in service of your king. Why, had I been available to be chosen for the honor, I hope that I would have known my duty and willingly submitted, just as you have.”

This distracted Beresford’s murderous attention from Senlis, but he still did not release his friend. Eyeing Valmey coldly, Beresford asked,
“Could
Adela have chosen you, then? God’s teeth, Valmey, you led the successful campaign in Northumbria! Were you asked first, but declined, pleading a prior promise that might well not exist?”

Valmey quickly held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I was not asked, Simon! My guess is that you were the king’s first and only choice!” Tacitly declining Beresford’s challenge of his “prior promise,” he continued smoothly, “And a remarkably good choice it proved to be, as became clear when you encouraged Adela to compare your qualifications, so favorably, to all other possible men of rank.”

Beresford was a straight-speaking man, and he hated that Valmey could so deftly bend a man’s words to his own purposes, like a skilled smith with hot steel. Beresford would have clutched Valmey’s throat in response had not his fingers been already tightly enmeshed in Senlis’s tunic. “God’s wounds, Valmey! Don’t try me too far—!” he began, but was interrupted.

Walter Fortescue stepped into the fray by saying blithely, “Now, there you’re wrong, Cedric!” He seemed oblivious to the tension in the atmosphere, and thereby inadvertently reduced it. “Beresford didn’t encourage Adela to sing his praises. Not the boastful type, our Simon! Sounded more like he wanted nothing to do with another marriage! Not that I blame him, if I recall his late wife correctly! Well! That’s the way I interpreted his exchange with Adela, in all events.”

Valmey murmured, “I stand corrected,” but did not have the look of a man who had erred without purpose.

Fortescue nodded at Valmey and smiled, rather pleased by his own analysis. “Oh, I was surprised when Adela announced that Beresford should wed Gwyneth of Northumbria, instead of allying the poor woman to a man with more liking for the ladies. Not, of course,” he said affably, turning to Beresford, “that you’re of Bernard of Northampton’s ilk and prefer men to women, God wot! We all know about your Ermina. She’s a toothsome wench, but you’ll have to admit you don’t have a soft touch with the ladies, even though you’ve produced your share of sons. And that’s why you were chosen, Beresford—to give sons to Gwyneth. You’re the very man to get the job done!”

The amused silence that followed this amazingly insensitive, amazingly accurate speech permitted Fortescue to add, “Now, Simon, do you let go of your friend’s clothing, for we all know there’s no need to kill the messenger who brings the news.”

Beresford’s hands had, in truth, grown slack on Senlis’s tunic. Now he loosened his grip completely and whirled. “Who should I kill, then?” he demanded through his teeth, ready to fall on Fortescue.

“No need to kill anyone, Simon,” Fortescue said simply, “for the news you received is not bad, but good. With this marriage, you’ll be doubling your lands.”

Beresford was disciplined enough not to brutalize a man twice his age. He balled his hands into fists and thrust them down at his sides. “I’ve land—and heirs!—to spare!”

“You’ll soon have more of both,” Fortescue replied complacently. “And I wouldn’t complain, if your Gwyneth is as beautiful as Adela says.”

Adela chose her moment well. Just then, she stepped up to the group of her most powerful barons, who fell aside at her approach. She did not immediately pursue the subject of Gwyneth’s beauty or her land. Instead, she asked Beresford, “Have you had time, my lord, to adjust to your turn of good fortune?” When he hesitated, she glanced over her shoulder at Stephen, who was still seated at the table, now with a court scribe at his side. The king was bent over a curling sheaf of parchment, apparently in the act of applying the royal seal to the document. “Stephen has chosen to grant you an earldom into the bargain. What do you say to that?”

The news that Beresford’s coffers would now increase with the earl’s “third penny” affected the various barons differently and caused the eyes of several to widen. Valmey’s narrowed.

Beresford’s did not change, for he could not have cared less about an earldom. However, when Adela smiled and held her hand straight out in front of her in a commanding gesture, he saw how he must answer. He tethered the frayed edges of his temper, knelt and bowed his head over her hand. “I say, madam,” he said obediently, “that my good fortune has just doubled.”

When he rose, Adela said, “You will now go to meet Gwyneth of Northumbria. She is at present in the great hall, awaiting your convenience, in company of Lady Chester. I would introduce you to her myself, but for the fact,” she said, glancing at the king, “that I am needed elsewhere at the moment.” She returned her gaze to Beresford. “If you are acquainted with Lady Chester, you might effect your own introduction.”

Beresford grumpily denied acquaintanceship with her.

Senlis, who had twitched his tunic back into place, said he knew Lady Chester, and volunteered to make Beresford known to his future wife. Adela smiled and moved away from the group. The barons bowed at her exit and dispersed.

When Senlis turned to Beresford, he had difficulty containing his mirth at the sight of his friend’s gloomy, glowering expression. With a foolhardiness that occasionally gripped him, he suggested pleasantly, “Perhaps you’ll wish to change your tunic before presenting yourself to Gwyneth—as you wanted to do earlier for Adela.”

Beresford returned a black regard that might have slain a lesser man. “Not a chance of it,” he grated.

****

Gwyneth of Northumbria was standing in a slanting ray of sunlight that fell from the high, unshuttered windows of the great hall, hoping the warmth would penetrate her cold skin. She had a few minutes to herself, for Rosalyn, Lady Chester, had just left the room. She breathed an inward sigh of relief for the moment of relative freedom. She was exhausted. She closed her eyes to master the fluttery fear that danced erratically in her stomach, but it eluded her control and rose to flit around her heart and flap painfully at her throat. She felt winded and out of breath.

It was a familiar sensation, being out of breath, but this time it was worse: she felt out of courage.

Where was it now, she wondered, the steady courage that had not wavered during the past fortnight of bloody defeat and terrifying capture, the bone-deep courage that had carried her, head high, through five humiliating years of marriage to Canute. She had always taken it for granted, this bone-deep courage that she had never before had to name or summon, this plain and simple courage of which she had never before realized that she had been so proud. Where was it, this wonderful courage, and why should it go into hiding now?

She could almost feel the weight and thickness of the stones that separated her from freedom. In her mind’s eye, she penetrated the walls of the White Tower and traveled through the inner curtain wall to the outer curtain wall. There her energies faltered, for she knew yet a third wall stood before the deep moat which surrounded the whole. Her courage sank lower.

To raise her spirits, she reminded herself that she had found herself in this situation before and had survived it. It should make little difference that three stout walls of the Tower of London surrounded her now rather than those of Castle Norham. It should make little difference that she was trapped in the main Norman stronghold rather than in the shrieval castle of the Northumbrian Danelaw. It should make little difference that she was promised to a Norman baron she did not know, for he could not possibly be worse than the Danish beast she had wed.

She had been younger then, too, and more tender when she had been taken from her Saxon home and bargained in marriage to Canute to prevent the devastation of her father’s estate. She remembered the valor with which she had faced her fate then, and which was so very different from how she was feeling now. Why had she been, as a girl of eighteen, braver than she was as a woman of almost four and twenty?

It made no sense. She had had years of experience in mastering the fear produced by the threats and abuse she had borne from Canute. She knew the signs. Her stomach would flip-flop. Her throat would constrict. She would have difficulty breathing. Yet she had never allowed herself to be overcome by her physical anxiety or to expose her vulnerability. Her courage would always rise up to save her. She would always protect whom she needed to protect, even if it meant further endangering herself. She would always find ways to maneuver around her husband’s wretched decisions and would always outwit him in the end.

The knowledge of her successes should be giving her confidence, not draining her of her courage. Unaccountably, the constriction in her throat became tighter.

She drew a painful gasp of air and shifted her glance back to the great hall. Her eyes rose to roam the magnificent rafters, from which hung bright banners that so thoroughly satisfied the Norman taste for symbolic display. Feeling oppressed, she lowered her eyes to survey the impressive length of the hall and the array of noblemen and ladies who were assembling, here and there, for the evening meal and diversions. She attempted to guess whether any man among them was the one who had been chosen to provide her “comfort in grief,” as Adela had phrased it.

She picked out a short one, a fat one, an old one, an absurdly young one. They were all possibilities, so far as she knew, for she had been given no information about her husband-to-be, not even his name. She saw a cocky one parading, a tall one gossiping and a clever one, resplendently dressed, watching her through narrowed eyes. She quickly shifted her gaze. It fell on a pair of knights who had just entered the hall and who were standing off to the side, behind the clever one.

She noticed first the handsome one of the pair. He was well formed, pleasing to the eye and had a charming, easy-going smile that he was just then bending on his companion. Interesting. What luck if
he
were the chosen bridegroom. She knew just how to handle such a type.

Then she looked at his companion and her heart convulsed spasmodically.
By Odin!
she swore to herself, invoking a god of her father’s father. Indeed, the man was like one of Odin’s warriors descended directly from Asgard, with sledgehammers for arms, chips of steel for eyes, molten bronze for hair. His body must have been chopped from the side of a granite mountain, and his features had been fashioned with no other goal than to inspire fear on the battlefield. It was a face only the goddess Freya could love.

Gwyneth glanced away and quickly reassured herself that of the several dozen men in the hall at the moment, it was unlikely that Odin’s earthly warrior was the chosen one. Fortunately, her thoughts were given a new direction when Lady Chester returned to the hall and to her side. Gwyneth saw that her gentle jailer was wearing an expression that gave her winter beauty a crafty cast.

“Well, now,” Rosalyn said, “I have just heard that the meeting in the council room has ended and that your chosen husband is Simon of Beresford.”

“What should I know about him?”

Rosalyn’s slim brows arched. “That he is a most unexpected choice! And that he is a man not known for softness. But more to the point, you should know that he is a widower with three sons.” She calculated. “Five years ago already it must have been that poor Roesia came to her untimely end.”

“How,” Gwyneth forced herself to ask, “did she die?” Her voice wavered, a little pitifully.

Rosalyn laughed. “Did Beresford beat her to death, do you mean? Oh, no! Roesia killed herself, more or less, in a foolish riding accident. But given everything, I am sure that he would have been capable of killing her on any number of interesting occasions!”

At this bad news, the tightness in Gwyneth’s throat increased still more. “Do you see him here, then?” she managed to rasp. “That is, you do know what he looks like, do you not?”

Rosalyn’s pretty red lips curved upward. “Every woman—and man—at court knows Beresford,” she said, somewhat slyly, Gwyneth thought. Rosalyn’s black eyes flashed around the room. Then she laughed musically. “Ah, yes! Look straight across. There he is with Geoffrey of Senlis.”