The Briton (23 page)

Surely this speech of his reeked of falsehood, luring her into a trap from which she could not escape.

“I know by your silence that you think me unworthy of you,” he said. For a moment he could not speak. Then he raked his fingers through his hair. “It is true what you said—

I am a half-breed. Many have taunted my heritage of mixed blood. My skin is the deeply tan shade of my mother’s land, and I was given the name Le Brun because of it. You are a
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Briton, lily-white, a woman of noble ancestry, the proud bearer of an ancient bloodline.”

“Jacques,” she said carefully. “Please… Please know that I was wrong to judge you by your lineage. I was unfair.

Thoughtless. Cruel. My father brought me up with the belief that Britons were superior to all and must eventually once again rule this isle. I was taught to hate and mistrust anyone who didn’t share my heritage. Though I respect and honor my father, in this he was wrong. I have learned that some good may be found in a Viking, a Welshman, a Norman. And in a man whose life represents a blending of people.”

“You speak of me.” He paced away from the fire and then back again. “Have you learned not to hate me?”

“I am wary of you, sir. But I see the admiration you have earned from many others, and I trust it.”

“Even if you can accept that I am not Briton, Norman or Viking, I am no nobleman. I am the son of a merchant. My Norman name is a symbol of what I have tried to become.”

“Once you were called Jacob,” she said softly. “Captain Muldrew who brought us to London knew your father. He told me of your home in Antioch.”

“I was Jacob there, but now I am Jacques. It is what I want in life—to be a Norman lord, a knight in service to Henry Plantagenet, king of England. And yet all I am and want to be causes you pain. Please, Bronwen, you must accept me as I am.”

He captured her arm and drew her close. Before Bronwen could hold him back, he slipped his arms around her and pressed her against his chest. His breath stirred the wisps of hair on her forehead. She resisted his embrace, desperately trying to think, to protect herself, to keep herself from this man. But his warmth and strength were too much. She let her hands slide across his back as she laid her cheek on his
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shoulder. Why had he uttered such words of confession and pain? What could they mean? She must make some sense of this madness between them.

“My lord—” she began.

“No, do not speak. I fear what you must say, my dearest lady. Too many barriers stand between us. I know that. I see them all as clearly as you do. Just let me hold you now, and deceive myself into believing that you are mine.”

Bronwen felt tears well. How she longed to tell Jacques everything in her heart—every dream, every joy, every fear.

She ached to stay in his arms, to be held forever by this strong yet gentle man. He spoke so openly to her. She wanted to believe him, to trust him. How could she doubt his motives?

And yet she must. To become a pawn in some game he played would ruin her forever.

As the tumult of emotion spun within her heart, Bronwen tried to pull away from the man whose very existence threatened her purpose in life. But when she tried to draw away, he slid his arms more tightly about her. When she lifted her focus to his face, his lips brushed hers, robbing them of purpose. He kissed her again, this time with greater urgency, and his fingers slipped beneath her veil into the dark locks of hair that tumbled around her shoulders. Unable to resist, she drew her own hands up his broad back and across his shoulders.

“Bronwen, please,” he murmured against her ear. “Do not leave me.”

“I must go.” She could hardly find breath to form the words. “I don’t know what you want of me, Jacques.”

“Give me a chance to prove myself. Allow me to defend and protect you. Let me stand up for the honor of your name against Aeschby. Permit me to give you all that is in my heart
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to give. The seeds of love grow between us, my lady. Let us nurture them, I beg you.”

Defend…protect…honor…love. Frightened of the very words, Bronwen drew away from him and bent to retrieve her veil. “You confuse me, sir,” she said. “Your words make no sense. I should go.”

She started toward the door, but he caught her and turned her toward him again. “Bronwen, you have said my heritage no longer repels you, and I have offered you my protection and aid. Why do you continue to reject me?”

“You speak of love, my lord.
Pure love, mixed love,
amour—
is this what you mean? If so, I must refuse it. I revile these French games of immorality and sin.”

“Games? Upon my honor, I—”

“When you hold and kiss me, I can only assume you desire something from me. I shall not cast myself at your feet to be used by you and then tossed aside should you get me with child. Or do you want Rossall? Is that the object of your charade? But you know Aeschby has taken it. You know I am a widow. Indeed, I have nothing to give you. I have no lands, no wealth, no dowry. What do you want of me? What?”

“Bronwen—”

“Leave me in peace, sir. Do not torment me again.”

She swept her veil over her head and fumbled for the latch.

At last her fingers found the cold metal and she opened the door. Stepping out into the night, she ran down the street.

Fleeing the cry of her heart…and his…she ran until she found the gate to Sir Gregory’s house. When she stepped into the warm foyer, she buried her head in her hands and wept.

Chapter Eleven

Exhausted, Bronwen climbed the stairs that night to find Gildan seated on the second landing. The younger woman rose and drew her mantle about her shoulders.

“Are you not abed, Gildan?” Bronwen greeted her.

“How can I sleep when I think what you have done to me?

Why did you go to see the monk? Had it something to do with my marriage to Aeschby? Did you tell him about Chacier? I know you spoke to Sir Gregory about us.”

“Calm yourself, sister,” she said, as Gildan rose to meet her. “The monk gave advice about my own life—not yours.”

“Why did you talk to Sir Gregory, Bronwen?” Gildan stamped her foot in anger. “Now Chacier has learned I am married, and you have ruined all my happiness!”

“Both Sir Gregory and I know the admiration Chacier holds for you—and the dangers that entails.”

“Chacier loves me! My life is changing for the better, and it is all because of him. Perhaps I don’t understand this
amour
of which he speaks, but I want to, Bronwen. Unlike you, I refuse to close myself off from all affection and become a sour, bitter, heartless old woman.”

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Bronwen grew hot with anger at Gildan’s words. “Very well, then. Go about this illicit affair your own way. But be aware that Sir Gregory has his eyes on you. Chacier is his heir, and you are nothing but a dowerless, poverty-stricken married woman.”

Gildan’s blue eyes brimmed with tears of fury and dismay.

“Well, Bronwen, you think you know so much about people. But you’re wrong about Chacier and me. You’ve closed your mind to new ideas and your heart to tenderness—and I pity you. Just because you’re miserable does not mean I must be condemned to unhappiness also. Stay out of my affairs, Bronwen. Out.”

Gildan turned on her heel and stomped up the stairs, weeping. Bronwen started after her, then stopped as tears spilled down once again. How could Gildan say her sister was doomed to be a sour, bitter, lonely old woman? Yet, as Bronwen sat wiping her damp cheeks, she saw a picture of herself—her dark widow’s robes, her often angry eyes, her tight lips. Was Gildan right? What had happened to that carefree young girl exploring the riverbank near Rossall?

Should she have let herself believe the words Jacques had spoken to her by the fireplace of his London home? Dare she have given herself to his touch, to his fire?

More unsettled than ever, Bronwen climbed into bed beside her sister without even discarding her tunic. Gildan would not look at her, but lay curled into a ball with the blankets over her head.

The next morning at breakfast, Lady Mignonette and her daughters pressed Bronwen for news of her meeting with the monk. Sir Gregory frowned at the three from across the table.

He had led Chacier into the
solar
for the first time since his son’s injury, and he motioned for silence. “Bronwen has no desire to discuss personal affairs at the breakfast table. Do let us have a moment’s peace, girls.”

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“But this friendship between our friend and a monk is fascinating, Father,” Chacier said with a smile on his lips. “Let us hear something of it.”

Bronwen was still getting used to the family’s habit of mealtime discussion. Chacier, she soon learned, was an eager and intelligent debater. When she declined to describe her experience, the young man gave a detailed history of the monastery. Gildan sat mesmerized, her breakfast untouched and her pink lips open.

“They live like hermits,” Chacier told the women.

“How boring,” Gildan commented.

“But dear lady,” he said, “I understand you are to become a nun…if your sister has her way.”

“Chacier, don’t speak nonsense!” Caresse cried as Gildan blushed a vivid pink. “She is too lively for a nunnery. Perhaps you can think of better employment for her, brother.”

“Indeed, I am certain of it.” Chacier leaned back in his chair. His long blond mustache cut a fine and noble outline on his narrow face. His hazel eyes were full of merriment as he glanced around the table and drew the conversation away from Gildan.

Bronwen drifted in and out of the discussion. She hated it when Gildan was angry with her, and she wanted to be done with this lengthy breakfast. But she did have one mission to accomplish.

“Do you know of Thomas à Becket?” she asked Chacier during a lull.

“But of course,” Chacier said. “He holds a school in his home for the ambitious young nobles of the city. The king may reside in Bermondsey, but it is from the house of Thomas à Becket that emissaries are sent with state secrets to the pope and the kings of Europe.”

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“How did he gain such respect and position?” Bronwen inquired, beginning to doubt Martin’s advice about taking her petty mission to such a great man.

“He was born of an Anglo-Saxon mother and a Norman father—citizens of London. Becket takes pride in being a native-born Englishman and Londoner. His father, called Gilbert à Becket, was a merchant but they lived humbly. It was his mother who urged her son to greatness. Indeed, some say she dreams he will one day be called a saint. Mothers always have high hopes for their sons—but Becket has shown what a merchant’s son can do for himself.”

Sir Gregory laughed and proudly clapped his son on the shoulder. But Bronwen was remembering Jacques’s words to her the night before. He had called himself unworthy, lower than she. Yet in Norman England, a merchant’s son could become great and powerful.

“Becket was schooled in Merton, London and Paris,” Sir Gregory told Bronwen. “He learned the merchant trade, the life of a knight, and the duties of a sheriff—all by appren-ticeship. And he studied church law and common law in Italy.

He has been made the prebendary of the churches of Mary-le-Strand, Otford in Kent and St. Paul’s. With that, he has enough money to live in comfort the rest of his life. If Henry becomes king, who can tell to what position he may aspire?”

“Enough of politics,” Lady Mignonette put in as soon as she saw a break in the conversation. She quickly turned the talk to plans and preparations for the coming fall and winter festivities.

Bronwen could not bring herself to join in the merriment over events she did not plan to attend. By winter’s start, she planned to be back at Rossall tending to her duties as lady of the holding.

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* * *

She and Chacier became nearly inseparable from morning until night. Gildan confided that they exchanged furtive kisses in the stairwell and tender caresses as they passed in the hall.

Forgetting her anger at her sister, she eagerly shared the flowering emotion and the tumult of passion she knew in the man’s embrace. She felt her life reborn as Chacier treated her with the gentleness and affection her husband never had.

No matter how apprehensive these confessions made Bronwen, her heart softened when she saw her sister’s eyes brimming with joy. For her own part, she was certain she had at last driven Jacques away. She and the other young ladies often passed his house as they visited friends, but she saw no sign of the man. He never returned to Sir Gregory’s home or sent her tokens of affection like the ones Gildan received from Chacier several times a day.

All the same, Bronwen longed for the touch of Jacques’s hands, and she ached to be near him again. As she sat in the window of her chamber and peered out at the changing leaves, she stroked her fingers along the silken lining of his mantle.

The three gold balls of his crest glimmered in the dim light of the afternoon sun.

A knock at her door one afternoon brought Sir Gregory into the room. “Madam, I have been on my almsgiving rounds today. Your monk has sent you a message.”

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The merchant held out a scrolled parchment. Bronwen took it and broke the seal. Unrolling the paper, she saw that a short note had been inscribed. “Please, sir,” she said. “Will you tell me what it says?”

“To Bronwen of Rossall,” Sir Gregory read. “From Martin of Charter House, London, 13 October, 1153. The interview with Thomas of London, called Thomas à Becket, is scheduled one week from this date upon the bells of None at his home. I have kept your confidences to me. Now I make one request in return. Please treat my friend with grace and fairness. He means well in all things.”