The YIELDING (32 page)

Still, Michael was grateful for what he did know. It was fortunate Sir Robert did not suspect his squire’s loyalty—a loyalty gifted to Michael for the personal interest he took in the boy’s training.

“You have done well, Squire,” Michael said. “I thank you.”

Squire Giffard pivoted and opened the stable door.

As the horses roused with Giffard’s passing, Michael looked to his hands. Regardless that these past years of lording had rarely put a weapon to them other than for practice, his palms and fingers were hardened and calloused from years of knight errantry. What had once maimed and killed, now more often healed, but he would be ready for Lavonne’s brigands.

To their grave misfortune,
they
would not be ready for him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Quill, ink, parchment. All that she had asked for and been denied. And there was more. She stepped to the chair and small table that had also appeared in her chamber.

Biting her lower lip that too well remembered the kiss pressed upon it a quarter hour past, Beatrix picked the speckled quill from the ink pot.

Had she been wrong to reject Michael? Might all he had done been for love, though he reacted as if repelled by the word? Did a man do this for desire only when there were women aplenty to bed? What did Michael feel for her? And what did she feel for him? True, he had offended when she had asked if he loved her, but her own insides had twisted to hear the words come off her lips. Did she love him? Was that what this ache was? She prayed not, for nothing could come of a woman like her loving a man like him.

Ink ran down the quill’s shaft and formed a bead that hung from the tip long enough for Beatrix to sweep the quill back to the ink pot.

“He wished you to have it,” Sir Canute said at her back.

She turned to where he stood in the doorway and noted he looked less imposing than usual. “You are following me.”

“A charge I have been given.”

“One you do not like.” She was pleased with her crisp delivery. Wondering what he wanted with her, wishing he would let it be known that she might ask about Lady Laura, she said, “Honesty is a virtue, Sir Knight.” But how honest would he be if she inquired into his whereabouts when Lady Laura had revealed her secret pain? And if he had been lurking, would he honor the lady’s bid to keep the tale from other tongues? “Were you near this morn when I came b-belowstairs to break fast?”

His mouth soured at the corners. “I was—and near enough to learn a truth I would not have guessed.”

She nearly groaned. “You should have shown yourself.”

“I was to remain as unobtrusive as possible that you would not feel like a prisoner.”

A prisoner when
she
refused to escape. “Considerate,” Beatrix clipped. “What do you intend, Sir Canute?”

“It is not my tale, and yet Lord D’Arci ought to know.”

Know that the little girl who adored him was his niece? Though Beatrix agreed that Michael should be told, it was not for Sir Canute to do.

She crossed the room to where he stood at the threshold. “As Lady Laura’s confession was not meant for you, I pray you will…affect to have not heard it.”

He looked down from his lofty height. “Then you will not use the tale for your defense?”

Though she felt small in his shadow, she did not step back. “As I told Lady Laura, I will not.”

“But without it, you have little with which to defend yourself.”

“The truth and God shall serve as my defense.” The words poured from her without slop or drip, and she was heartened that she continued to progress even without benefit of anger.

She glanced over her shoulder. “And now, also, I have a means of writing it down lest my tongue turns wrong.”

The knight considered her, then nodded. “I think you will prevail, my lady. Indeed, it shall be my prayer.”

Dare she believe his sincerity? “I thank you.”

Though she expected him to withdraw, he said, “An apology is due you, my lady—one, methinks, that will explain much I am certain my lord did not tell.”

“What is it?”

“I betrayed my lord, and for it was relieved of my guard over you the day following your arrival at Soaring.” His jaw convulsed. “Michael rejected my urging to send word of your capture to the baron. Thus, I kept a vow he had demanded of me years ago and sent word myself.”

She blinked. “You?”

Color smudged his cheeks. “Though my lord would not admit it, I could see he doubted your guilt—that whatever had happened between the two of you had begun to turn him to a man who thinks first with his loins. And I feared that if he went that way, he would lose all.”

Beginning to tremble, Beatrix reached for the wall alongside the door and braced a hand to it as the mortar with which she had built walls around herself began to dissolve. Michael had not sent word.

Canute touched her shoulder. “You should sit down.”

She looked up. “I did not believe he would tell of my capture, and when he said he had…”

“I am sorry. In trying to protect a man no longer in need of my protection, I erred grievously.”

Michael had wanted her to believe he was so unaffected by her that he had not hesitated to send word to Lavonne, had wanted her to think she did not know him, had accused her of being no different from—

“Pray, Sir Canute, who is Edithe?”

As if Beatrix had turned leprous, he dropped his hand from her and stepped back.

She followed. “I beseech you, tell me.”

His teeth clenched, but finally he said, “Edithe is the reason I did what I did, and that is all I can tell, my lady.”

“But he accused me of being the same as she.”

“He may have said it, but he knows you are not.”

And had said so on the night past. What had Edithe done that Sir Canute would not tell? What great ill weighted Michael?

The knight turned away. “If you require me, I shall be on the landing below.”

“Sir Canute!”

He looked around. “My lady?”

“Thank you.”

His lids briefly lowered. “You are more generous than I would be.”

“I understand why you did it.”

“Nay, you do not, but methinks one day Lord D’Arci will tell you all.” He strode onto the landing and halted. This time when he came around, it was not at her urging. “’Twas that woman who gave my lord reason to believe that of which you are accused,” he said.

Then Edithe had killed someone dear to Michael? Beatrix opened her mouth to ask, but the knight began his descent of the stairs. When he went from sight, she crossed her chamber and sank onto the chair.

Michael had not sent word. She lifted fingers to her lips in remembrance of his kiss. It had felt so real. For a moment it had made her think—

What? That she and Michael…

“Impossible.” But were it possible, Michael would lose all as Sir Canute feared, for the baron would not suffer his vassal to have any relation with her. And regardless of what Michael wanted, she could not ask him to give up Soaring. She did not know how she knew, but it was very real to him—something he would miss to his end days.

He had not sent word.

She lowered her head to the table and gave in to the longing to know, even for a short time, what she had thought to never know—what she had never truly wanted before Michael.

He had not sent word.

She looked to the writing instruments.

He
did
care for her.

She pushed to her feet only to pause. It was a mistake to seek him out after what had happened in the stables and tempt what should not be tempted. But naught would happen, she told herself. She simply needed to speak with him.

Treading her conscience, she hurried from her chamber and descended the stairs to where Sir Canute turned a furrowed brow upon her.

“My lady?”

“I seek your lord’s solar.”

“He is not yet returned to the donjon. Indeed he may not return for some time.”

She had not expected he would, as it seemed he spent much of his days out of doors between the workings of the inner and outer baileys. “I shall await him in the solar.”

Sir Canute sidestepped, barring her advance. “My lady, I am certain Lord D’Arci would prefer that you remain in your chamber.”

Ignoring the voice that told her to heed the knight, she said, “Will you escort me, or do I go alone?”

Grudgingly, he led her down the corridor.

The solar was empty as expected. What was not expected was the starkness of the chamber that had escaped her notice when Michael had summoned her here to tell her she was leaving Soaring. It was he who had filled her gaze, turning all else to shadow that now had form, minimal though it was.

Though fairly large, the room was furnished with the bare necessities, as if it belonged to one of lesser nobility rather than the lord of the castle. The only luxury was the scent of woodruff wafting from the rushes. No covering upon the long table against the wall, and set around it, two worn chairs. No curtains around the bed that boasted only a simple coverlet. No gilded, carved chest, but a plain iron-banded box. And the walls…

Though flecks and patches of paint were visible, it was many years since the scene that spanned the chamber had known form.

“Soaring has been thirty years without a lady,” Sir Canute said.

“You are…perceptive, Sir Knight.”

“Not always, it seems.”

She allowed a sympathetic smile. “Thirty years,” she murmured and stepped farther into the solar. “Why so long?”

She heard the rushes rustle as he followed her within. “Ere Lord D’Arci was named lord of Soaring, it was held by Lord Chavelle. After his wife died birthing their first child, and with her their babe, he did not wed again.”

Love? It seemed every nobleman wished an heir to pass his possessions to. Had Lord Chavelle’s wife been more to him than proof of his prowess?

Beatrix glanced at the bed. And what of Michael? Because of Edithe he also denied himself an heir? Or might he be betrothed?

The possibility drew a line of ache through her.

“Is there anything you require, my lady?”

Wishing he would be perceptive again and answer her unspoken question, Beatrix shook her head. “Naught but your word that you shall not…violate the confidence with which Lady Laura gifted me.”

“I will think on it.”

Beatrix watched him pull the door closed, then once more considered the furnishings. She swallowed hard when the bed fell to her regard. “Nothing will happen,” she whispered. “Nothing I do not wish to happen.”

And therein lies the problem, does it not?

She turned her mind to what she might do with what could be hours before Michael’s return and hit upon the answer. Though by now she ought to be able to present her tale of what had happened at the ravine all those months past, she would pass the time preparing her defense.

She was in his bed.

Michael closed the door and, amid the flicker of torchlight, crossed the solar. As he neared the bed, the dagger atop the clothes chest drew his regard—the same Beatrix had taken from Sir Durand. Dare he believe its presence there indicated she trusted him? If so, why?

He looked at where she curled on the opposite side of the mattress. She slept, at once provocative and innocent in the shifting light that fingered her silken hair, chased across her features, and sighed over her gowned legs and hips.

When he had come abovestairs following a day of preparing his men for the ride to Broehne, he had been unsettled by Canute’s warning that Beatrix awaited him within—that she had done so through the nooning and past the supper hour, taking her meals abovestairs. And now, to see her in his bed after she had spurned him in the stables…

Nay, it was for something else she had come. For a moment, he entertained she had changed her mind about allowing him to steal her from Lavonne’s revenge, but it was not so. Later, after the trial, he would himself deliver her to her family, regardless of whether she was freed or the sentence of death was pronounced.
That
she could not turn him from.

Though he knew he ought to rouse her, he was stopped by the sight of her. Though he knew he ought to seek the farthest corner, he lowered to the mattress edge.

Lips parted, lashes shadowing her cheekbones, eyes moving beneath her lids, Beatrix continued to sleep.

He did not know how long he sat staring at her, but sometime later he used the excuse of fatigue to lie down. The three feet that was all that separated them was a mistake, making him ache to hold her. How could he have ever believed ill of her? One had but to gaze upon her and hear her voice…

Though it seemed hours before sleep took him, Michael fell into dreams of the brigands who would try to take from him what did not belong to him.

When had he come within? Hour after hour had crawled by until Beatrix had so tired of defending herself to the walls that she had fallen asleep in a chair before the hearth. Sometime later, she had awakened, cramped and aching. She had resisted the bed, knowing it was inappropriate but had finally succumbed. What had Michael thought when he found her here?