The Longing (8 page)

“You will do it?” she asked. “You will bear witness that you could not have fathered Judas? That he is a de Balliol?”

The color began to return to his eyes, and when he blinked, the black of his pupils no longer dominated. “What makes you believe the queen will take my word over that of your brother’s men?”

“I have not forgotten the dissent between your family and King Henry whilst you supported King Stephen’s claim to the throne, but I also know there are few families King Henry holds in such high regard as yours now that he has your fealty.” How she wished he would not stand so near, that his eyes did not probe so deep.

“What do you gain from this?” he asked. “Why do you care so much what happens to the boy?”

The question was so ludicrous that she nearly laughed. “He is my nephew. More, he is as a son to me, all that is left of my friend, Judith—”

“Friend!” The anger had returned, but this time it was not directed at one beyond his reach.

Refusing to retreat, she said, “Aye, friend. She did not have to ask me to watch over her son, but it was the last thing she did ere she died, and I have done it as best I could.”

“Then for her and her son, you sacrificed your own happiness? Never wed?”

His question was more unwelcome than he could know. But this was not the route she wished their conversation to travel.

“Perhaps as a means of atoning?” he pressed.

Susanna curled her fingers into her palms.

“Too late, would you not say? Judith
is
dead.”

The cruel bite of her nails would not stop her words from crowding the space between them. “’Tis not
I
who must needs atone, Everard Wulfrith.
You
are the cause of this misery, and you will right the wrong.”

He drew his head slightly back. “Will I?”

Her right hand came up, but she stopped it before he could—and he would have, his reflexes a step ahead of the slap she longed to land to his immovable face.

As she stared at his splayed hand that had arrested its own course near her own, he said, “I will not.” Then he pivoted and strode toward the door.

Dear God, what have I done?

Susanna flung herself across the chamber and grasped his arm as he stepped into the corridor. “Forgive me, Lord Wulfrith. I am but frightened for my nephew.”

He looked at her hand upon him. “Another spectacle, Lady Susanna?”

Whatever it took… “If you truly loved her”—she winced at the shake in her voice—“you would save her son, even if ’tis true you could not be his father.”

His lids narrowed. “It
is
true. No matter your pretty words about a past that is best left buried, I am under no obligation to Judas de Balliol—or you—to stand before the queen and declare myself incapable of having cuckolded one of King Henry’s barons.”

Pride. Of course that was it, though it certainly was not all. Susanna gripped his arm tighter. “I beg you, do not turn your back on Judas. He is only ten!”

“And he is not my problem.”

Feeling her color drain, Susanna released his arm and gripped the door frame lest her knees gave out from under her.

Something like concern lined his face, but then it smoothed away. “Eat something.” He jutted his chin in the direction of the table. “You are too gaunt and shall need your strength for the morrow’s ride.”

Gaunt. As Alan himself had been fond of pointing out once “plump” no longer served.

“Good eve, Lady Susanna.” He started to turn away.

“I will do anything,” she whispered, “whatever you ask of me.” And however he wished to interpret that…

Not well, she saw when he looked across his shoulder, then he was striding opposite.

She closed her eyes, gripped the doorframe so hard her bones ached.

Do not buckle. Deep breath. Now turn. One foot before the other. Close the door. One foot before— Very well, rest. Only for a moment.

When she finally opened her eyes where she leaned back against the door, they fell upon the untouched viands Everard Wulfrith believed would give her strength, which was true if she could keep it down. Still, it would not be the kind of strength she needed. And she resented it where it sat cold and stale and stomach-turning.

It was not plump Susanna de Balliol who lunged across the chamber. It was not gaunt Susanna de Balliol who wrenched the platter from the table. It was Susanna de Balliol who had only one thing in the world to lose—Judas. It was that one who threw the platter across the room. That one who did not flinch when it and the goblet of wine and foodstuffs crashed against the door. That one who sank to her knees, hunched forward until her head nearly touched the rushes, and tried—so very hard—to pray to God who seemed in no mind to heed the groaning and cries of a soul as sinful as hers. Not even for the sake of His beloved Judas.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He did not expect to find Sir Elias within an arm’s throw of his fist, but the man was near the base of the stairs, reclining against the wall, pressing the back of a hand beneath his nose as he watched those in the hall.

Regardless of whether or not the woman abovestairs had spoken true about what had gone between her and this knight, still Everard felt the prickle of dissatisfied knuckles. Fortunately, it was such an unfamiliar sensation that he recognized it as unbecoming of a Wulfrith knight, especially in light of the distance that now stood between Sir Elias and Lady Susanna.

Not until he was two steps removed from the knight did the man look around, his lack of startle evidencing he had heard Everard’s descent. Though there was a wary light in his eyes and tension about his shoulders, he did not appear to have retreat in mind. Of course, they were within sight of those in the hall, and there was a measure of safety in that. A
measure.

Everard halted alongside him. “Certes, you take chances you should not, Sir Knight.”

The man lowered his hand, revealing the damage Everard had inflicted—swollen and purpling nose and lip—and shrugged. “I have heard that before. Indeed, I am not without the scars to prove it.” He glanced up the stairs. “I wager she has allowed you to think the worst of her.”

"Allowed?"

The man opened his mouth, but snapped it closed as a crash of metal against wood sounded from above.

Everard peered up the stairs, listened for more of the lady’s temper to find its ease, and once again reflected that, for this, women were not welcome within these walls. He returned his gaze to Sir Elias. “‘Twould seem the lady is displeased with the audience granted her.”

The man frowned. “You are certain that was of Lady Susanna’s doing?”

“There are no others abovestairs,” Everard clipped, then picked up the thread the man had let unravel, just as he had done in telling that the lady had allowed the worst to be thought of her. “What makes you think it could not be her?”

The knight glanced toward the hearth where Judas de Balliol stood back from the others who boisterously encouraged Sir Rowan to regale them with another tale. “Are the Wulfriths as honorable as I have heard told?” he asked, then gave a sudden laugh. “Well, by those who do not count themselves your enemies.”

Everard knew he should not pursue this conversation, that his time was better spent calling an end to this day that would begin the candle burning toward the next when the boys and young men resumed their training in the dark before dawn. Still, he said, “’Tis as we strive to be.”

“As do I, though…” Sir Elias pressed a hand to his nose again, eyed the bit of blood he came away with. “…I seem prone to failure.”

Everard, who rarely lacked evidence of being well supplied with patience, wondered if, at last, he was coming to the bottom of it.

“Since giving myself in service to Alan de Balliol three years past,” Sir Elias continued, “I have become acquainted with Lady Susanna, and never have I known her to throw or break things no matter how difficult her circumstances.”

Though Everard was tempted to question how difficult those circumstances could have been—hers a privileged life as the pampered daughter of a baron and the fondly regarded sister of the brother who had inherited their father’s title—he did not. Despite how adept she was at churning an anger so rarely churned he had almost forgotten he possessed such depth of emotion, he was not blind or insensitive. Whatever the root of her circumstances, they were well enough written on her thin, unsmiling face and in eyes that no longer danced with light and mischief.

“Most stoic, she is,” murmured the one who, whatever his purpose, seemed inclined to defend the lady he believed he knew well.

“How well
do
you know her, Sir Elias?” Everard pointedly put to the knight who had returned his regard to the boy he was charged with watching over.

Sir Elias looked sidelong at him. “You speak of our kiss.” It was of good benefit to him that he did not smile or leer. “It was not our first, though methinks you would have it be our last.”

Everard’s knuckles prickled again. “I care not what goes between you and the lady providing it does not go within my walls.”

The knight shrugged a shoulder. “Then ’tis good we depart on the morrow. We do, do we not?”

As told by the platter flung against the door abovestairs. Though inclined to confirm what had already been determined, Everard’s own question had not been answered. “You said she allowed me to think the worst of her.”

Sir Elias put his back to the wall, swiped at his nose, and crossed his arms over his chest. “She will not like that I speak of such things, but if it gains whatever she seeks and which, I wager, you are unwilling to give, it is as much in my best interest as hers.”

Everard nearly asked what the man’s best interest was, but… One question at a time.

“Such is the way of Lady Susanna,” Sir Elias continued. “Even when ’tis clear she is not in the wrong, she is loath to defend herself. Rather, she saves up her defenses for another.” He jerked his head in the direction of Judas de Balliol. “It is for him she does it—and other things.”

Everard did not like the sound of “other things,” but he set the question behind him. One at a time.

“I would not say Baron de Balliol was cruel to the boy, but—” The knight snorted. “Aye, cruel fits, though I have seen worse.”

Once again, Everard felt his anger churn.

“Most times it was not bad, but when the wine and ale flowed…” He nodded. “…one would not believe the boy was of the baron’s loins, and the more de Balliol imbibed, the less he believed it himself and the louder he cursed and claimed to have been cuckolded.”

But what of when Judith had yet lived? Had her husband suspected he had been cuckolded? Had he treated her ill as her body burgeoned with child? The knave had named her son Judas—Judas!

“That does not seem to sit well with you, Lord Wulfrith,” Sir Elias murmured.

Neither did this knight whose narrowed eyes witnessed emotions Everard was unaccustomed to making an effort to suppress. Clearing his face, he said, “Do you intend to tell me in what way Lady Susanna allowed me to think ill of her?”

“She took the blame for our…indiscretion, did she not?”

Refusing to yield to his knuckles, Everard flexed his hands. “Your face tells otherwise.”

“Ah, well, there is that.” The man touched his swollen nose. “However, that misunderstanding she did set right. Ne’er was she in danger of ravishment. I do have more honor about me than that.”

Everard let an impatient breath slide out between his teeth. “I grow weary, Sir Elias—”

A cheer shot through the hall, and he turned his head and looked upon those entertained by a piece of Sir Rowan’s tale that very likely involved the edge of a blade. It took a more practiced eye to discern if Judas, who continued to stand at the outskirts of the group, was as moved as the others, but there was a lean to his body, tension in his bearing, and a widening of eyes that told he wished to draw nearer.

Before Everard had gone abovestairs and found Lady Susanna dishonoring his hospitality with a tryst, he had observed the boy and concluded Judas de Balliol was, indeed, one to be watched. On the surface, he appeared mostly harmless, but he was far too watchful to be trusted. There was something sly about him. However, if it was true what Lady Susanna and Sir Elias told of his upbringing, it was to be expected. And corrected if he was to one day rank among men worthy of knighthood.

Everard returned his gaze to Sir Elias and discovered he had become the observed. “Which misunderstanding did the lady not set right?” he prompted.

“She let you believe she is wanton, did she not?”

Everard waited.

“She is not wanton, Lord Wulfrith.”

“Then what?”

“Desperate—in a world beaten in and out of shape by men.”

Desperate
was not entirely unexpected, but that last was, especially as it was spoken by a man. Again, Everard tried to take the knight’s measure, but Sir Elias seemed ever shifting, one moment as if something inside him was trying very hard to be honorable, the next as if that something was not powerful enough to battle his baser, self-serving side. Why? Might he have deep feelings for Susanna de Balliol?

It was not something Everard was inclined to ask, as it had nothing to do with him, and yet he said, “Do you think yourself in love with the lady?”

Sir Elias dropped his head back against the wall and seemed to consider it. “I have thought I could be, but I do not dare, for methinks she may be too…broken.”

Concern pushed its way through Everard’s resistance. “Broken?”

“Aye, I have seen what such desperation can do to a woman—beat her down so that what remains of her unplucked petals is too bruised to stay long upon the stem.”

Again, a peculiar choice of words. “You sound more a poet than a knight, Sir Elias.”

He looked momentarily away, gave a short chuckle. “I do. But then, I am a man without a sword.” He spread his hands, looked pointedly at his belt. “Alas, not even a dagger.”

“They shall be returned to you on the morrow upon your departure.