Wonderful (11 page)

He waited for Tobin to stop laughing. “You find that amusing?”

“Aye.” Tobin was still grinning, the cocky fool.

Merrick was quiet for a long time, thinking; then he looked at the boys. Thud was tousled-headed and had a nose like a spaniel—wide and covered with brown freckles.

Thwack was snub-nosed and had a wide mouth and serious brown eyes. Both boys were had dirt smudges and bruises and scrapes on their faces and necks. They were a sorry pair, but there was something about them, an eagerness to please that made him think long and hard about what he should do.

“I have a rule about my men fighting amongst themselves. You are all aware of this rule.”

All three of them suddenly wore expressions of dread.

“If I do not punish you, others will believe my orders can be disobeyed.” Merrick stood. He turned toward Clio and extended his hand. “Come, my lady.”

She looked at his hand as if it were a coiled snake.

“I would not dare ask you to wait again,” he added with a cutting tone, then turned to the lads. “You will follow us.”

They left the great hall. Clio walked by his side. When they were in the bailey, he could feel her watching him.

“What will you do to them?”

“You shall see.”

“I do not want them harmed. I will not let you beat them.”

“I do not beat young boys.” He paused. “Only women who do not know when to hold their tongues.”

“I am not afraid of you, Merrick.”

She called him by his given name. Finally. He stopped by one of the towers and gave some instructions to a guard.

Tobin and the younger boys stood there, trying to look brave. Merrick could see and feel their apprehension, something he wanted them to feel as part of the lesson he wanted to teach them.

The guard returned with a cart and shovels.

Merrick stood tall before the lads, then pointed at a wooden trapdoor near the base of the tower. “You will clean out this latrine pit.”

Their faces grew tight with horror.

“And every latrine pit. At every corner of the keep and at the gates.”

“Every pit?” Tobin repeated. “But, my lord, there are ten pits.”

Merrick crossed his arms over his chest. “I know how many there are.”

The lads all looked green. ’Twas hard to keep from laughing at them. “I suggest you start now. ’Twill take a few days if you work hard and work together.”

He turned to Clio. “Come now, my lady. Let us leave them to their work.” He led her back across the bailey. As they walked she kept looking back over her shoulder.

“Thud and Thwack did nothing to deserve this,” she said as they neared the inner gate.

“They disobeyed the rules. They have to be punished.”

“But it was your bully of a squire who fought with them. He is older and wiser and more experienced. He could have wounded them. They could have had serious injuries.”

He stopped and leaned against the stone curtain wall. He looked down at her. “Like getting hit in the head with a pot?”

She did not know when to cease her argument. “They are only boys. Special boys. Do you know where they were found?”

“Under a rock during a full moon?”

“It is not an amusing tale, my lord. They were abandoned in the forest. When they were found, they spoke but only single words. They ate raw meat and crawled on the ground, sniffing at it.”

“I can do nothing about their past.”

“You can be gentle with them. They need kindness.”

“And what will happen when they grow up being treated like babes? You think that will help them?” Merrick gave a sardonic laugh. “You do them no favor by coddling them.”

“And you do by punishing them?”

“I will do as I think best.” He held his hand out to her. “Come now.”

She didn’t move, but stood there glaring at him.

He looked away for a moment. The thought crossed his mind that he might need to have one of the castle blacksmiths make a strong lock for the west tower.

He counted to ten. When he looked to her again, she had her back to him. Exasperated, he exhaled and closed the short distance between them. “Turn around, Clio.”

She did not move. It looked as if she were not even breathing.

He took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

She glared up at him, her expression all stubborn pride. His gaze left her eyes and moved to her mouth, set in a firm line that said, “I will not let you break me.”

He had no patience left this day; it had been taxed to his limit. He pulled her against his chest. “You push me too hard. I will not take this from a woman. I will not take this disrespect from you.” He grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at him.

“Don’t!” She struggled in his embrace, wiggling and squirming while her hands pushing against his chest.

He swore to himself that he would not force a kiss on her again. He wanted her to come to him of her own free will. He released her and stepped back so swiftly she stumbled. He grabbed her arm to steady her.

She scowled at him, then gave his hand a pointed look. “Do not touch me.”

He did not release her this time, but stood there, holding her arm. Their gazes were locked in a battle of wills, and with each second that passed their breath came in short, angry pants.

She was looking at him as if she expected something, as if she almost wanted him to react.

“I will not ravish you, Clio.”

She gave him a long hard look, then raised her chin. “Why not?”

He stood there, dumbfounded. Surely she hadn’t just asked him that. “What did you say?”

“I asked you why not?” She planted her fists on her hips in that way she had and added, “Do I not appeal to you, my lord?”

He drove a hand through his hair and looked away, asking heaven for patience with this woman, which was like asking to find the Holy Grail.

She stood just inches before him, her chin jutting out and her hands on her hips as if she were not barely half his size.

There was a challenge in her eyes and she said, “We shall have an interesting marriage if you cannot even bear to consummate it.” She shook her head the way his warhorse did when he reined him in too quickly.

“Annulments have been granted for such situations,” she foolishly continued, having no idea of the dangerous line she had crossed. “Perhaps ’tis a good thing that you find my looks not to your taste, my lord earl.”

Her tone was too casual, as if she spoke about something menial, like fleas or firewood or a meal, not about his manhood or something as important to both of them as a blood bond of marriage. Very quietly and slowly— with much control—he spoke, “I have said nothing of your looks nor of my reaction to them.”

“I am aware of that fact. Certainly you do not wish to wed me for myself, but for Camrose and the king’s favor.”

“My motives for marrying you are none of your concern.”

She laughed at him without humor.

“Do not worry yourself over the consummation, my lady. I promise you our marriage will be consummated so often the servants will have no time to change the bed linen.”

“Ha!”

There it was. The one word that could make his blood boil. His anger was so strong it almost clogged his throat.

He stood barely a foot away from her and fixed his darkest look on her defiantly upturned face. “One more word from you, mademoiselle, and I will consummate our union against this castle wall.”

Chapter 12

“I’m glad to find you surrounded by peace and quiet, my friend.”

Merrick jerked his black gaze away from Clio at the sound of Roger FitzAlan’s amused voice.

Roger stood in the shadow of an archway, a shoulder resting against the wall of the gate tower and one foot propped casually on one of the stone steps that led to the tower parapet.

He stepped out of the shadows and looked at Merrick with a wry gleam in his eye and an irritating smile that broke too brightly through his neatly clipped red beard.

Merrick glanced down at Clio. She was standing toe-to-toe with him, glaring at him the same way he had been glaring at her. To anyone watching they must have looked like two angry bulls ready to butt heads.

His anger had been so consuming that he had not thought of where they were or who was near. He had been that angry.

Yet all around them were the sounds and motions of the castle’s renovation. Men shouted orders to workers while guards directed the building materials and supplies in an endless line coming into the castle.

Blacksmith’s hammers rang in the distance and sounded like war swords clashing together on a battlefield. Rope winches with gears that needed oiling squealed loudly, and heavy tubs of lime mortar were raised to the upper battlements, where freshly hewn stone girded with long iron posts made the new walls at Camrose stronger than those of any other castle on the Marches.

Supply carts squeaked and rumbled through the gates, their teams goaded by men who whistled the oxen forward. Broad and sturdy stone wagons with long lines of huge draft teams lugged stacks of smooth square slate tiles that would line the new arrow loops. As those wagons rolled over the old wooden bridge that spanned the newly emptied moat, the studded cart wheels made constant creaking and tapping sounds.

Roger closed the distance between them and clapped Merrick on the shoulder. “All you need now are the Welsh.”

There were times when Roger could be damned obnoxious; this was one of them.

Roger turned to Clio, gallantly taking her small hand and bowing low over it while he praised “the beauty of the rose-petaled flush in her lovely cheeks,” Pinning her with a heated look, Roger slowly raised her fingers to his lips, kissed them, then turned her hand, and kissed her palm.

Merrick had seen his friend perform this same gesture whenever his mind was bent on a sly seduction. He also knew Roger well enough to know he did this with a purpose in mind. Something that had nothing to do with Clio and everything to do with goading Merrick into a spate of jealousy.

It was working.

Merrick had the sudden urge to plant his boot on Roger’s leather-covered ass and shove. Hard.

Clio smiled brightly the way she seldom smiled at him, completely taken in by Roger’s romantic ways, which did nothing to cool Merrick’s temper.

Then she sweetly asked Roger to join her for late mass and their supper meal following.

Roger looked at Merrick over the top of her blond head and winked.

Since Merrick had arrived at the castle late that first night, he had yet to take any meal with her. She never came down, even when he had made a point of saying he would see her there. He scowled down at her, unable to stop himself.

She quickly made some excuse about leaving her lord earl to his well problem, and before Merrick could stop her, she hurried off toward the keep.

Roger looked at him. “So what is happening with your well?”

“Nothing I cannot handle easily.”

“Are you certain? I can help. I don’t mind being a part of this.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Merrick groused. “Since you think you’re a part of everything.”

Roger laughed. “Not everything, my friend. Just that which you are too hardheaded to take advantage of.”

But Merrick only heard him with half an ear, for he was intently watching her weave a path through the bustling outer bailey, around horses that were twice her size, past honking geese that had nipped at his ankles, and dogs that yapped at the rolling carts.

He was well aware that Roger watched her as he did, and he felt his friend’s puzzled look. But Merrick could no more look away than he could act as if he did not see the sun. He stood there silently, feeling unsettled and restless, the way he felt just before a battle.

She moved past an oxcart that carried huge stone grinding wheels for the mill and some iron gears for the new portcullis. Their size made her look even smaller, farther away, like something he sought that was just beyond reach.

After the cart passed, Merrick lost sight of her. But his mind had not lost her image, nor had he lost the powerful effect one small woman could have on him. He could still see her small straight back, the proud lift of her head, and the long blond braid that hung down her back so thickly and brushed over her body, back and forth, back and forth, whenever she walked.

The image took him on a moment’s journey back to that first night at Camrose, when he and Roger had come upon her in the chamber off the solar. The night she had been dancing out that sprightly charade by the golden light of a burning candle.

His first sight of Lady Clio had hit him like a war hammer. Fate had given him a lady so fair, so full of life, that he had only stood there, dumbfounded, watching her performance.

He had told Roger the truth when he’d said he’d never pondered her looks. But the moment he saw her, he changed how he thought.

She was small. The top of her head did not even reach his shoulder. Yet her presence in a room affected him more than he could fathom. ’Twas as if some giant had entered the room and the walls had suddenly begun to close in. A tight feeling he could not explain.

The first thing he had noticed when he stood in the arched doorway was her hair. It hung clear to the backs of her knees and was a light silver color he’d only seen once before—when he’d been lying under a purple night sky in the desert, waiting for a battle that would begin at dawn.

That night had been filled with shooting stars, hundreds of them. None of the men there had ever seen the like. Some fell on their knees, confessing all, for they feared the world was ending.

Others drank too much wine and later did not remember the spectacle. But Merrick had lain there most of that starry night, on a pallet outside of his tent, and he’d watched the brilliant twisted star-trails above him.

Like now, when he watched the lost image of one small woman.

Chapter 13

At the high table in the great hall that eve, Clio sat between Merrick and Sir Roger, and fought the urge to fall asleep facedown in her trencher.

The spiced rabbit and wild truffles had been served with flaming quail on swords. But the two men did not notice. Instead, they debated how many rocks would have to be heaved from a standard mangonel to smash a hole in the four-foot-strong curtain wall.