Where Love Has Gone (6 page)

“How dreadful for you. Aglise and I spat now
and then, as sisters will do, but we have never actually
quarreled.” Elaine gazed at him with a sympathy that threatened to
plunge Desmond into deep guilt. He rejected the emotion, sensing
that, if he prodded just a little more, if he twisted Elaine’s
heartstrings a bit tighter, he could lure her into revealing what
he wanted to know.

“A happy childhood is a blessing,” he said.
“Mine was not happy. My father was a harsh man. My mother was his
second wife, married for her dowry. He never loved her, or the sons
she bore him. He had his heir by his first wife, you see.

“But your father, from all I’ve heard of him,
was very different from mine. Lord Aldwynd must have been a fine
man, else he and Royce would not have become close friends.”
Deciding he had revealed enough of his own past life to set an
example of reminiscent openness, Desmond fell silent, waiting for
Elaine to walk into the trap he had prepared for her.

“Father was so kind to Aglise and me.” Her
voice was soft with memory and tinged by a sad note. “I can
remember him sitting in the great hall at Dereham Castle with both
of us on his lap, Aglise cuddled in one arm and me in the other. He
always smelled of horses and wood smoke and pine.”

“You and your sister enjoyed a happy
childhood.”

“Oh, yes. Until Father died.”

“What of your mother?” Desmond thought Lady
Irmina had likely been jealous of any attention paid to her
daughters rather than to herself, so he wasn’t surprised when
Elaine pressed her lips tightly together and didn’t respond to his
question.

“So, after Lord Aldwynd’s death, you and
Aglise came here, to Warden’s Manor, to be fostered with Lord
Bertrand and Lady Benedicta,” Desmond said, determined to draw more
information out of her. But gently, so she wouldn’t resent his
insistence and thus refuse to answer any questions he needed to ask
in the future. “Did Lady Benedicta have no other ladies attending
her?”

“No. I suppose,” Elaine said after
considering the matter for a moment, “it’s difficult to find
parents who would insist upon such an exile for their daughters,
and harder still to find girls who are willing to live in so remote
a place, even for just a few years.”

“But you and Aglise were willing?”

“Our mother insisted. We had no choice.”

Desmond wasn’t surprised to hear it. From
what he knew of Lady Irmina, sending her daughters to Jersey
probably seemed a good idea to her. And yet, something about the
arrangement didn’t quite fit. So fine a man as Aldwynd of Dereham
must have had other friends than Lord Bertrand, friends who would
be willing to take Aldwynd’s daughters into their own households.
For that matter, since Royce was Aglise’s godfather, why hadn’t the
girls been sent to Wortham Castle, to live there with Royce’s own
teenaged daughter?

The question raised another, more troubling,
issue.

Surely, Royce knew all about the girls’
family situation, so why hadn’t he provided such vital information
to his own agents before sending them off to Jersey?

While Desmond contemplated the unanswered
questions surrounding the disappearance of Aglise and tried to make
sense of apparently unrelated facts, Elaine untangled her fingers
from his and rose from her seat on the cloaks.

Moments later a flash of smooth, white leg
and a neat ankle brought him to his feet. Elaine had removed the
woolen hose she wore for riding and had kilted her skirts high,
tucking them into her belt, leaving her long legs bare. Desmond
watched in astonishment as she ran across the sand and splashed
into the water.

For an instant he feared Cadwallon had gone
in too far and was in trouble, and Elaine was foolishly trying to
pull him ashore because he, Desmond, was too lost in thought to be
of any use. Then he saw that, while Cadwallon was some distance
into the water, he was only knee deep, still safely in the
shallows. Elaine was walking through the water toward Cadwallon,
laughing at something the huge man had just said.

Desmond stood watching them and trying to
suppress his annoyance. Elaine seemed to be perfectly at ease with
Cadwallon. She bent to scoop a shell out of the water and handed it
to him.

“Near my home in Devon,” Cadwallon said, “we
find mussels on the rocks and make a meal of them. And Janet, my
wife, collects shells of all kinds.”

“Give her this one,” Elaine said. “Tell her a
friend found it on a sunny April day.”

“Aye, I will. It’s a pretty shell. Janet will
like it. The water’s a bit cool.”

“It’s refreshing after our warm ride, but
yes, you mustn’t catch a chill,” Elaine said, laughing. “Lady
Benedicta will surely scold me if you do.”

They turned together to walk out of the
water, but stopped when they saw Desmond with his fists on his hips
and his legs spread wide in a confrontational stance. Desmond’s
heart ached to see the laughter vanish from Elaine’s face.

“What’s wrong?” asked Cadwallon, looking
about as if to discover any approaching danger.

“Nothing,” Desmond said. Seeking an excuse
for the way he had been staring at them, he added, “I was just
wondering whether Aglise ever waded here, or at some other, less
safe cove.”

“Are you suggesting she might have drowned
accidentally?” Elaine asked. “Impossible. Aglise vanished in
February, when the weather, and the water, are both too cold for
wading.”

“So she did,” Desmond agreed, forbearing to
mention that someone who wanted Aglise dead could have pushed her
into the cold winter sea, where she wouldn’t have to drown. The
girl would have been chilled to death within moments, with not a
bruise on her body to suggest violence.

“You were remarkably quiet during our ride
back,” Cadwallon said when the two men were in the guestroom they
shared, washing up before the evening meal.

“I was thinking.” Desmond splashed warm water
on his face and reached for the linen towel Richard held out to
him. He wasn’t going to admit that most of his thoughts had
centered on Elaine, rather than on his mission. He could not
understand how a young woman who was not pretty could so quickly
invade his mind until there was precious little room left for manly
concerns.

It wasn’t as though he was deprived of female
company. He’d had enough beautiful ladies fluttering around him
while he was at court with Royce, any of whom would gladly have
accepted his lusty embrace. He just hadn’t wanted those women. He’d
had enough of casual bedding, and living with his brother and
sister-in-law during the past year while he regained his health had
shown him how true affection and tenderness produced a contentment
and a genuine happiness that Desmond had always assumed lay far
beyond his reach. He still believed happiness was beyond him, but
he was no longer willing to settle for anything less.

“Elaine’s a clever young woman,” Cadwallon
said, as if he could read Desmond’s thoughts.

“She does seem to be intelligent,” Desmond
cautiously agreed.

“She certainly distracted you.”

“Distracted? How?” Surely, he hadn’t been so
transparent that Cadwallon had perceived his interest. Impossible;
he had no interest in Elaine.

“You were pushing her hard during the early
part of our ride,” Cadwallon said, “all but wringing out of her the
information she didn’t want to speak. So she offered something
else.”

“Oh?” Desmond closed his mouth and waited,
knowing the other man would continue.

“That business about the king of France.”
Cadwallon laughed. “Elaine knows Royce, and I’ll wager she knows
what kind of work Royce does for King Henry. She also knows Royce
sent us here. It follows, then, that Elaine knows the kind of work
we do for Royce. So, she dangled poor, old King Louis the Fat
before you, and you took the bait.”

“Are you suggesting Elaine lied?” Suddenly,
inexplicably, Desmond’s fingers itched to wrap themselves about
Cadwallon’s neck.

“Of course not.” Cadwallon laughed again.
“She took great care not to lie. She mentioned a suspicion, then
changed it to an impression. And you did what she wanted. You let
the question of what Elaine knows about her sister but isn’t
telling us drop unanswered and unexplored.”

“So I did.” Desmond was ready to give credit
where it was deserved. “As you said, a clever woman. I admit I fell
into her trap. But later, when you left us alone there on the
beach, I set a snare for her.”

“And?” Cadwallon regarded him with a
smile.

“She neatly avoided my trap by following you
into the water.” He didn’t mention holding Elaine’s hand.

“And in the water, she avoided my questions
with her innocent prattle about seashells. All of which means,”
Cadwallon said, “we have to concentrate on the issue that brought
us here, and not allow Elaine to distract us again.

“Ewan,” Cadwallon went on, turning to his
waiting squire, “did you learn anything from Jean the kitchen
boy?”

“Aye, my lord,” Ewan responded. “Jean adores
both Lady Aglise and Lady Elaine. He’s from Gorey village, so he
knows all the fishermen and many of the sailors who put in at
Gorey. It seems there’s a regular traffic between Jersey and
Normandy, and with England, too. I think you were correct to say
Jean is the person Lady Aglise would apply to if she wanted to
leave the island. But he swears she didn’t leave. He’s truly
worried about her.”

“I’ve heard much the same from every
man-at-arms or squire I spoke to today,” Richard added.

“So, Cadwallon said, “it seems Elaine is not
mistaken in her contention that her sister is still here on
Jersey.”

His glance caught and held Desmond’s and it
was Desmond who said what both of them had likely been thinking for
most of the day.

“If Lady Aglise is still here, and no one has
seen or heard from her since February,” Desmond said, “then she
must certainly be dead.”

“No, you may not ride out again with those
men,” Lady Benedicta told Elaine. “Your absence yesterday left your
chores undone. We don’t have enough maidservants to do your work as
well as their own.”

“I’m sorry if you and the maids were
inconvenienced,” Elaine said. “But, surely, finding a missing woman
is more important than mending torn sheets or supervising the
scrubbing of the stillroom floor.”

“Not if the woman is missing of her own
volition.” Lady Benedicta’s mouth snapped shut on the abrupt,
coldly spoken words.

Elaine knew there was no arguing with her in
her present mood. Only a display of meek obedience would soften
her. Elaine resolved to keep silence on the subject of Aglise for
the entire day. She told herself it scarcely mattered whether she
went with Desmond and Cadwallon, or not. When the men returned from
their second day of searching, she’d learn if they had discovered
any sign of her sister. If Desmond refused to answer her questions
she would attempt to persuade the kindly Cadwallon to tell her what
she wanted to know.

So, over the next few hours she hid her
impatience while she mended torn linens. With her head bent over
the work she allowed her thoughts to drift. They drifted to
Desmond. Though he was far from ugly, he was not particularly
handsome, either. Taller than most men, well muscled without being
unpleasantly bulky, with light brown hair and grey eyes, he could
have been almost any knight from her late father’s service at
Dereham. Yet Desmond was clearly not an ordinary man. His sharp
features displayed such intelligence, and his eyes were so alert as
they took in everything happening around him, that Elaine found him
compellingly attractive.

Her warm reaction to him shamed her. This was
no time for her to be looking at a man with personal interest, not
while Aglise was still missing. She should never have allowed him
to hold her hand. That she could regard him, a man she barely knew,
as anything more than a helper in the search for her sister was
shocking. Perhaps she was not so very different from Aglise, after
all.

“This is fine needlework,” Lady Benedicta
said several hours later, while she and Elaine were in the linen
room folding a newly repaired sheet. “You do sew an admirably fine
seam.”

Elaine looked at her in surprise, for Lady
Benedicta seldom praised her and the sheet was no better sewn than
dozens of others she had repaired over the last two years.

“Thank you, my lady,” was all she said.

“Did Lord Royce’s men learn anything
worthwhile yesterday?”

The question came suddenly, taking Elaine off
guard. Fortunately, she didn’t have to think about her
response.

“What they wanted,” she said, “was to ride
around the island with someone who knows it well. They did stop
here and there to ask if anyone had seen Aglise recently, but
mostly they were interested in seeing places where she could be
hiding, or beaches and harbors from which she could have left
Jersey. They seem to believe she has left, which may be why they
didn’t search more closely.”

Elaine didn’t mention the remarkably intense
interest with which Desmond and Cadwallon had gone over every
aspect of the landscape. She was sure that after only one day they
knew as almost much about the island as she did. And then, of
course, there had been Desmond’s sudden accusation that she was
concealing information. She had turned aside his questions and
Cadwallon’s later queries as they stood in the water, but she
didn’t fool herself into believing either of them was finished with
the subject.

“Of course, Aglise has left.” Lady Benedicta
placed the folded sheet on a shelf and smoothed the linen with
strong, capable hands. “I know you do not want to believe ill of
your sister, but it is all too clear to me that she has fled with a
lover.”