The Longing (25 page)

She lifted her chin and, past the hair flying into her eyes, braved his grim, moonlit expression. “No lie. Ere her passing—”

“I do not believe you!”

She felt her own anger stir beneath the layers of years, sensed it seeping and rising through her as it had done when Lady Richenda had tried to steal Judas’s breath.

Calm,
she counseled.
Do not make this any worse than it already is.

In a voice far from level, she said, “You do not have to believe what I say for it to be so.”

“It is not so. Never would she have trusted you—”

“Had I done what you think I did, she would not have let me so near her. But she believed different because she knew different.”

She heard his teeth grind. “You are saying you did not carry tale to your brother of what you saw in the garden?”

“That is the truth.”

He stepped so near that she startled. “I will not be taken in by your deceit, Susanna de Balliol. Mayhap Judith was, but not I.”

Bind thy tongue. Do not loose it!

But Susanna did not heed Susanna. Hands curling so tight she felt the pendant’s every curve in her palm, she said, “Aye, Everard Wulfrith, I am a creature of deceit, perhaps even more than you think, for I sought and embraced deception to gain what Judas and I needed to survive where we were not meant to survive.”

She saw uncertainty flicker across his face, but anger was soaking her through and she could not stop the words that vied to reach her tongue ahead of all others. “You asked if there was anything else I hid from you that you ought to know. There is not, certainly nothing that will make a difference where Judas is concerned, but perhaps you ought to know what these eleven years have held for me.”

She filled her lungs full, not only for the words she intended to send forth but to ease the tightening about her throat and chest. “Thieving. Lying. Ever watchful. Ever wary. Creeping and keeping to shadows. Bargaining kisses and caresses that made me want to retch and scrub my skin raw ’til it bled. Fending off ravishment that was thought my due for allowing my body to be so sinfully used.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Even my brother believed it was my due, for he did little more than scold Sir Morris when he…” She shook her head. She had not meant to speak as far as that.

Everard took a step back.

It was then, with the silence broken only by the play of the wind, that she noticed how lightly clad he was in tunic and hose—a match for her chemise that was far more suited to being abed than being alone with a man. Not that she had anything to worry about where Everard was concerned.

“Susanna,” he said, and she thought there was a note of urgency in his voice where there had been condemnation, “here is not the place for such a conversation—”

She jerked her arm out of his hold. “I have not yet told you how I first learned to use my body for gain. You will like this.” She did not truly believe that, but there was something satisfying about freeing those words from the depths of bitterness. “The night of the day that Judith breathed her last, my brother, drunk with ale and grief, announced his son would not bear his name, that he would, instead, be known as Judas. Judas, the betrayer! When I spoke out against such cruelty, he took offense and…” Should she tell him Alan had backhanded her with such force she had been knocked to the hearth?

She drew a breath that shamed her for all its shuddering. “He had me put outside the walls. It was winter’s end, but still the nights were cold, and I had no mantle. Worse, Judith’s babe was in his cradle and there was no one to answer his cries—certainly no one who would answer them as they needed to be. And so I struck my first bargain with the man-at-arms who delivered me outside the walls, the same who had many times looked at me as one should not look upon any woman.”

Her belly churned. “In exchange for stealing me back inside, I let him kiss and touch me. And kept my supper down until Judith’s babe was safe in my chamber.”

As might be impossible to keep down now had she recently eaten. Feeling the telltale burn in her throat, she swallowed hard and the bile returned to where it belonged.

She tried to read Everard’s face. However, it told nothing of what he thought of all she had revealed, for it was just as grimly set, if not more so. Likely, he believed she yet lied, and it incensed her.

This time it was she who stepped near. “Ask it, Everard Wulfrith. Ask it, and I will answer no matter how fiercely you name me a liar.”

His jaw shifted. “Why did your brother behave toward you in such a manner?”

She nodded. “That is the question, though only because you have laid upon me a burden that is of my own making only in that I saw what I should not have and did not act as was expected of me. And so I say again, ’twas not me who carried tale to Alan about that day in the garden.”

Realizing her voice had risen again and how close she was to tears, Susanna tried to urge herself down from the heights of outrage. But her world was out of kilter, and though tempted to steady herself by leaning back against the battlement, she hated how weak it would make her appear and, instead, widened her stance.

“Now the next question,” she pressed onward. “If I did not tell him, how did he learn of what went there?”

“I am listening.”

“Good, for here is the answer. From an upper window above the garden, Alan saw Judith and you. Just as he saw me, the sister whose duty it was to alert him to his betrothed’s betrayal.”

Inwardly, Everard jerked. He wanted—and did not want—to believe her, the latter for the selfish reason he would hate himself if he had so misjudged and wronged her.

“Unbeknownst to me,” she continued, “Alan waited for me to prove my loyalty was first to kin, but I failed him.” A small sound escaped her that might have been a sob. “He was so enamored of Judith that I did not wish to see him hurt, and though I had heard her agree to go away with you, I did not believe she would defy her family. Thus, I determined my brother need never know of her indiscretion. And Judith… I would not say Alan was cruel—not then—but he had been heavy-handed with his first wives, and I wished to spare my friend knowledge of that side of him.”

The indignation that had brought Everard abovestairs ebbed further as moonlight revealed that her moist eyes now brimmed with tears.

“And my reward?” Her voice cracked. “The sister of whom Alan had been fairly fond was deemed a traitor and subjected to contempt reserved for those who misplace their loyalty. Thus, I—not my nephew—am the Judas of the de Balliols.”

Remembering what he had said weeks ago when she had asked how much he had hated her all these years—that he would not likely ever have a care for her since it could not be known if it was loyalty to family or jealousy of Judith that had guided her the day she had revealed what she had seen in the garden—Everard felt his insides twist. It was possible she lied—

“’Tis true Judith’s trust was
denied me, for no matter how often I proclaimed my innocence, no matter how poorly my brother behaved toward me, she would have naught to do with me. Then, a month following the marriage, Alan summoned me to his solar. I hoped we might reconcile, but he was not of that mind. He said he would never forgive me for putting Judith before him and, since I loved her so well, he had broken my betrothal so I might remain at Cheverel as her lifelong companion.”

Susanna’s breath was coming faster, as if her legs, not her words, ran a great distance.

“Faced with a loveless, childless life in the household of a brother who hated me, I cried and pleaded, but he would not be moved and ordered me from his sight. I found Judith in the corridor. She had been listening at the door and heard enough to accept that I had not revealed her. She said…” A small sob escaped Susanna. “…she was so very sorry.”

Everard’s hold on eleven years of believing ill of this woman slackening, he clenched his hands and felt the ruby dig into his palm.

Dear Lord, how I have wronged her!

When she swayed, he once more reached to her. “Susanna, let us go inside.“

“Nay!” She jumped back and came up against the battlement, slapped at his hand when he tried to turn it around her arm, cried out when something dropped to the roof between them with a metallic jangle, fell to her knees and began searching for what she had lost.

Everard knew where to find it, for its sound told all. He lowered to his haunches, scooped it up, and saw it was the pendant necklace he had looked upon when she had been so weak he’d had to raise her up and hold the cup for her to drink. It no longer wafted the scent of roses, for it had been emptied of its petals.

Gripping it by its chain, he held it out to her. “I have it.”

Her head came up sharply. As frantic as she was, he expected her to snatch the necklace from him. Instead, the hand with which she reached stilled, and she stared at the pendant as the wind moved it side to side. Then, as if she had come to the bottom of her righteous anger, she shuddered. And when next she spoke, her voice was faint as of one too weary with the world to make much effort to be heard. “I nearly left that for you as well.”

Everard frowned. “As well?”

She closed her fingers around the pendant, drew it to her chest, and scooted back against the battlement. “The pendant was a gift to me from my father. I gave it to Judith so she might more discreetly keep upon her person the ruby with which you had gifted her.”

Then the gem had not been consigned to some forgotten corner as he had thought it might be. “She told you I gave it to her?”

Susanna shook her head. “Not in words, but I knew it had to have been you, for she was ever bringing it to hand, sometimes so thoughtlessly it was a miracle Alan did not notice.”

Everard closed his eyes and dredged up the ache of loss Judith had also felt. The keen edges that had cut him that first year of losing her to Alan de Balliol and then to death were rounded now, the sharp pain reduced to a dull throb. And he was grateful, for there had been a time when a day had not passed without him feeling as if he were bleeding out.

“Should I stop?” Susanna asked softly.

He lifted his lids. “I would have you tell the rest of it.”

When she nodded, he rose and stepped forward. As he lowered beside her, she looked across her shoulder. That he could pick the sorrow from her eyes told him he was too near, but he did not move. Nor did she.

“I begged Judith to hide the ruby,” she said, “but she would not. Once, my pleading so angered her that she declared she almost hoped Alan would see it and know its meaning. But then she discovered she was with child.” A small smile turned Susanna’s lips. “My brother was so pleased that he began to treat her more kindly and with consideration, and Judith started to warm toward him—not much, but enough to hope their marriage might be mended by the babe growing in her.”

She sighed. “Still, she would not set aside your gift and, more than ever, I feared it would be discovered. For that, I offered her my pendant. There is a hinge on the back and a clasp on the front that allows the top to be parted from the bottom so it can be filled with petals and its wearer made to smell as if she walks among flowers. Amid crushed petals, Judith hid the ruby so she could wear it near her heart and…” She returned her gaze to Everard’s. “…never would my brother know you were there between them.”

Between them—as if he had made a cuckold of Alan de Balliol. He had not, but what he had done was still wrong. “She should not have,” he said harshly, “just as I should not have refused the ruby when she tried to return it ere her wedding.”

“Nevertheless, it gave her peace. Thus, throughout most of her pregnancy, things were better between my brother and her.”

As Susanna had tried to tell him when they had shared a meal on the day past.

“Had Judith not died, I think it possible she would have become content wed to my brother, for though she had little time with their son, she seemed so hopeful when she held him. And Alan…” She shrugged. “I believe he must have loved her as much as he was capable of loving another, and I have thought, perhaps, it was simply easier to blame her death by childbirth on you rather than hold himself accountable for any part of it. And so he named his son Judas, and every day he grew more certain your eyes were the ones that looked back at him.”

So many missteps. So much injustice. Such pain where there should have been joy. Everard opened his own hand and watched the crushed white cloth slowly unfold to reveal the ruby. “And now you return this to me. Why, Susanna?”

As the wind lifted her hair, she considered the gem. “All these years, I have worn it near my own heart where it did not belong, but when I saw where it did belong—that it had been taken from your dagger—I wished to return it so you would know she had kept it. That she had not forgotten you.” She looked up. “You believe it, do you not?”

“I do.”

Her shoulders eased and she dropped her head back against the battlement. “I am glad.”

Everard did not know how to say what needed to be said to begin to make amends for having wronged this woman, and as he struggled for the words, she said, “So now you know what you need not know, and whether or not you believe what I have told, I do not care.”

That
he did not believe. “Do you not?” he said.

Silence spilled out of her, then a sigh. “Aye, that is a lie. And the truth? I do not want to care.”

“Why do you?” As soon as he asked it, he knew he should not have, that the question laid a path to a place he should not go with her.

The tears that had cleared Susanna’s eyes returned, though he caught only a glimpse of their sparkle before she lowered her gaze to the pendant. “Eleven years is a long time to pay for betrayal.” Her voice was tight, tremulous. “But even longer to be thought ill of by the man whose indiscretion led me to betray my own brother.”

Remorse sank hooks into Everard, and deeper yet when the wind shifted the hair across her face and he saw the glistening trail of the tear that had coursed her cheek.

She shook her head. “Though I know I should not care what you think of me or the things I have done to make it through one day into the next, I care far too much. When I came to you for help, that is all I wanted, for you to aid Judas. I did not want to like you as once I had—”