My Lady Midnight
Laurie Grant
How Could One Hide A Noble Heart? Alain, Baron of Hawkswell, knew his children's winsome nursemaid was not all she seemed. Nay, beneath her serf's homespun lay a golden soul whose mysterious allure would change his life forever… !Lady Claire de Coverly dared not reveal her Norman identity or her duplicitous mission to the imposing Lord of Hawkswell Castle, for to do so would destroy the joy she found with his children and end the exquisite passion she felt in his arms… !
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ue1c451ce-3bc1-5aaf-9d1a-134970561d93)
Praise (#u00e89602-d2a1-5952-a4fb-ef83afad52c4)
Excerpt (#uda5a980f-831c-5f4d-b564-0713d2111d88)
Dear Reader (#ud9ce710f-29ad-5402-ab97-8bc8066919a0)
Title Page (#u05a5dabc-fadc-50b7-8313-53c164137884)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (#ua4555282-aa38-57cf-8332-129c6570e41c)
About the Author (#uabe5e59d-2c5c-5526-94d3-5edd8523aac6)
Dedication (#uedaaea9e-7ec2-5aa5-af53-b9cd20eb0c85)
Prologue (#u0cdda267-0a72-5196-a465-dbea3cc54384)
Chapter One (#ufe95edd7-aab1-5ac2-9776-cbf470e00e06)
Chapter Two (#u6c484a5b-93eb-53ce-83dc-7fc6bcb4f026)
Chapter Three (#u14495c6f-d8ba-5e62-81a6-971c973b1709)
Chapter Four (#uae5c455d-379c-5b4a-b30b-4dbe3f4e98d8)
Chapter Five (#ue13005d0-d947-5152-840c-347f8f79de97)
Chapter Six (#u6104a7b5-62b8-5176-b6a7-a0281bc518f3)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise for the author’s work
Devil’s Dare
“…the lively pace of Devil’s Dare will carry you along…a taste of the spirited Old West.”
—Romantic Times
“Kudos to Ms. Grant for creating such a warm-hearted tale!”
—Rendezvous
The Raven and the Swan
“…an unbelievably gifted writer…highly recommended.”
—Affaire de Coeur
Beloved Deceiver
“…a tale of sweeping pageantry and the healing power of love.”
—Romantic Times
“I am yours, my lord,”
Claire declared with all the tenderness she could muster.
Alain raised his head from hers and their gazes locked. “You are, aren’t you?” he said wonderingly. “You are mine—my lady…”
She blinked, startled. “L-lady? I am no lady, L-lord Alain,” she stammered, wondering if somehow he knew. “I am just a serf…”
His lips curved upward. “You may have been born but a serf, but there’s a core in you of the finest gold. During the day you move among the humble folk of Hawkswell, but at night, when you come into my arms, you are every bit as fine as the proudest of Norman ladies—my lady,” he told her, his voice deep and husky with feeling. “My Lady Midnight…”
The phrase hung on the air, caressing her soul like velvet warmed before the fire…
Dear Reader,
Known for both her medieval novels and her Westerns, Reader’s Choice Award winner Laurie Grant is back this month with her new medieval tale, My Lady Midnight. This intriguing story features a Norman widow who becomes a political pawn when she is forced to go undercover as a governess in the home of the baron she believes responsible for the death of her best friend. Don’t miss this dark and wonderful tale.
Award-winning author Miranda Jarrett’s new Sparhawk book, Gift of the Heart, is a touching story set in the wilds of the New York frontier where a woman, abandoned by her no-good husband, discovers happiness in the arms of a fugitive haunted by his past.
Beauty and the Beast, a Regency tale about a troubled nobleman who is badgered into health by an interfering young neighbor, is the third book by March Madness author Taylor Ryan. And from hugely popular contemporary author Dallas Schulze comes her new Western, Short Straw Bride, the heartwarming tale of two people who marry for practical reasons, and wind up falling head over heels in love.
We hope you’ll keep a lookout for all four titles wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325. Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
My Lady Midnight
Laurie Grant
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (#ulink_faf6bf14-52b3-58ff-a1bc-c531e6ac8198)
With grateful thanks to Sherrilyn Kenyon, my “medieval lifesaver,” and Ann Bouricius, critiquer and friend
LAURIE GRANT
combines a career as a trauma center emergency room nurse with that of historical romance author, she says the writing helps keep her sane. Passionately enthusiastic about the history of both England and Texas, she divides her travel time between these two spots. She is married to her own real-life hero, and has two teenage daughters, two dogs and a cat.
If you would like to write to Laurie, please use the address below:
Laurie Grant
P.O. Box 307272
Gahanna, OH 43230
To Maryanne Colas, for checking my French And always, to Michael
Prologue (#ulink_4793f030-86d6-5a89-9abf-a8090bef55e2)
Coverly Castle, England
January 1135
“Is he handsome, your betrothed?” Claire asked her best friend, Julia, who was also a distant cousin.
“I suppose so,” the older girl said with a sniff, tossing her silver-gilt curls, “if you care for a swarthy sort of man.” Her expression said that she did not. She examined a minor smudge on her gown of green silk. She reached over and twitched the end of one thick, golden braid at Claire’s nose teasingly.
Claire laughed. “But Julia, he is a baron! Haimo is but a knight, and a second son at that.”
“Bah! I had hoped for an earl,” Julia informed her, her nose wrinkling in a way Claire found unattractive, though she never would have told Julia so. “And Hawkswell Castle looked cold and forbidding when we visited last week for the betrothal. ’Tis nothing like Tinchley. But with King Henry like to die at any moment and leave his daughter the throne, Father says it would be well to have an alliance with a noble known to be loyal to the empress, no matter that Father would prefer to see Stephen on the throne.”
“But you’ll soon make it a warm and welcoming keep, I’m sure of it,” Claire assured her friend. “I hope so, for I’m going to beg Haimo to bring me for a visit just as soon as we are wed.”
“Hummph. I don’t see why your father won’t bring you to the wedding this spring.”
Claire sighed. It was still a sore point with her, too. “He says it falls too close to my betrothal to Haimo d’Audemer, and that there is apt to be unrest in the realm as soon as the old king breathes his last, for there are many who do not want to see his arrogant daughter crowned.”
“Men!” Julia said with a snort. “They don’t give a fig for our wishes, do they? I’ve already heard rumors about my husband to be, and they please me not.”
“Rumors? What rumors?” asked Claire curiously. Julia narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “I heard his servants whispering, that’s all. It seems my future lord was quite the womanizer, when he was newly knighted. They said he’d sired a bastard.”
“What of it? Many young bachelors do so, I believe,” Claire said, trying to keep her tone light, though inwardly she was dismayed for her friend and cousin. She was certain Haimo, whom she was to marry, would never do such a thing.
Julia’s laugh was brittle, her gray eyes wintry. “Indeed! Men may do as they like, and women have naught to say about it, have you not noticed?”
Claire reached out a sympathetic hand. “I’m certain ’twas but a youthful indiscretion, and one he repents of already, now that he’s to wed you, cousin. You’ll see, he’ll love you dearly, and he’ll have no need of a leman with you as his wife. And you’ll give him children—legitimate children, sons who can inherit.”
“Mayhap.” Julia sighed, and tossed her silvery blond curls again.
Chapter One (#ulink_5efc2388-efb7-545a-9a6e-36d180ec16bf)
Coverly Castle
May 1140
“I might have known I’d find you out here with the serf brats, Claire.”
From his peevish tone Lady Claire deduced that her brother Neville was not at all pleased by the discovery, which came as no surprise to her. He had always felt the English folk who served them—and their offspring—were inferior to his hounds or his hawk.
“Excuse me, children, there’s a storm cloud on the horizon,” she said in English to the pair of flaxen-headed children seated on either side of her, and glanced meaningfully at her brother. Bran and Elga giggled, their hands over their mouths.
“And stop talking that English gibberish with them!” ordered her brother, hands on his hips, his expression more ill-humored than before. “If you’re going to waste your time with them, shouldn’t you be teaching them French so that they can communicate with their masters?”
Claire stared up at her brother, whose large body blocked the sun, casting a shadow over her and the children as she sat on the greensward before Coverly Castle. She knew he suspected she had just made a jest about him to the children.
“Actually I was teaching them French, before you approached, Neville,” she told him, switching to that tongue and trying her best to smile so that perhaps by some miracle her brother would, too. Already Elga was shrinking behind Bran’s broader shoulders, frightened by the Norman lord’s stormy countenance. “Before you know it I’ll have them speaking like native Rouennais. Now, what is it you wanted, my lord brother? I assume it cannot wait until the lesson is over, whatever it is?” she added hopefully.
“No, it cannot,” he said, ignoring her hint. “I have to tell you I’m not pleased at your intransigence, Claire, not pleased at all.”
She allowed herself to look mystified for a moment, then, just as Neville was about to explode in exasperation, said brightly, “Oh, you must be talking about the prospect of my marrying again! Well, well! I’m sorry for your displeasure, my lord brother, but I’m going to hold you to the promise you made me when I wed the first time.” Claire kept her grassy seat as she looked up at Neville. “I married once to further the family aims, and at Haimo d’Audemer’s funeral you said it was all you’d ever ask of me. Well, I’m taking you at your word—and you are a man of your word, are you not?”
She could see his jaw tighten, could see a muscle working in her brother’s temple as he strove to master his irritation.
“But how was I to know Haimo would die without even getting you with child, so we gained nothing from your marriage?” Neville asked irritably, as if the freakish accident, a fall from a horse that had broken Haimo’s neck, had somehow been Claire’s fault.
She shrugged. “I held up my end of the bargain, Neville, and I expect you to do likewise. And if you only wished to harp at me about marrying, I would get back to teaching the children, if you don’t mind. You would like them to be able to understand your orders soon, would you not?” She turned back to the children, hoping he would let it go at that, and knowing full well he would not. Neville de Coverly could not bear to be balked.
“As a matter of fact, I do mind, sister. We need to speak of this matter further. Dismiss the little bastards.”
Claire was about to retort that the English children were as legitimately born as he was, but saw from Neville’s set jaw and crossed arms that he would only make a scene if she frustrated him further. She didn’t want timid Elga to have nightmares.
“Run along, children,” she said, switching back to English. “I’ll see you later, and when I do I’ll tell you a story about a fierce Norman dragon and how he met his comeuppance at the hands of a brave Saxon knight.”
The children giggled again as they darted looks at the “dragon” beside her, then scurried off, Bran roaring like a dragon and pretending to belch smoke at Elga’s heels.
She turned back to Neville, her arms crossed until she realized she had unwittingly copied her brother’s pose. “I’m listening, Neville, but I will tell you before you start that I will not give any further consideration to the idea of wedding that beefy oaf Fulk de Trouville. I’ve had one husband who was a bully, and I will not take another, do you hear?”
“It need not be Fulk,” Neville pointed out impatiently, his eyes narrowing so that he looked like a cornered wild boar about to charge. “There are many others whom our uncle would think good alliances—”
“Our uncle!” she shrieked. “By the rood, brother! Do you never think for yourself? Do no thoughts but those of my lord of Tresham enter your brain? You jump whenever he commands it, Neville!” The words, fueled by her own irritation, had rushed out in a torrent of feeling, and only when she had said them did she consider how she might have just made matters worse. She knew Neville hated to have his authority challenged, and foolish pronouncements often assumed the weight of law when that happened.
“Our uncle, the earl, is a very important man, one of Stephen’s intimates,” Neville told her. “I’ve always found it wise to heed his rule.”
The reply was much milder than the one Claire had been bracing for. Neville seemed to be making an effort to rein in his temper. Wonder of wonders! Hmm…what can he be wanting?
“Claire,” began her brother again, his tone gentled, almost friendly, “If you don’t want marriage, what is it that you do want? Surely you don’t plan to spend your life trying to lesson ignorant serf whelps, never again leaving the keep in which you were born? Though of course I would give you shelter there whenever you needed it—”
“My thanks, brother,” she retorted dryly. “Your charity astounds me. Neville, I happen to love being with the children, teaching them—and they are children, Neville, not bastards or whelps. They’re a good deal more appreciative of me than Haimo ever was—or you ever were, for that matter. You’re always trying to make me into something I’m not—”
“You love children,” Neville put in. “But wouldn’t you like to have children of your own? You’re a young woman still, Claire! If you married you could have a lapful of your own babes…”
She turned so he would not see the longing in her eyes. The desire to have her own children was her vulnerable point. But by all the saints, she would not wed some brutish bully to do it!
“Yes,” she admitted at last. “But if I cannot find a man I can love, I’ll make do with other people’s children. A whole army of children is not worth another Haimo.” She turned around and stole a look at Neville’s set face. He could force her to it. She knew that he could back her into a corner until her only choice was to wed at his behest or take the veil. And she knew that she was ill-suited at best to be a bride of Christ.
“Well, come along. Our uncle d’Evreux would speak to you about another way in which you can serve the family and your king.”
She glanced at him in surprise. “’Another way?’ The king? Whatever do you mean, Neville?”
But her brother’s face was shuttered and remote. “I believe I will leave it to him to tell you,” he murmured, and turned on his heel, indicating with a peremptory gesture that she was to follow.
She smothered an angry retort. Did Neville expect her to come barking at his heels and wagging her tail, like one of his hounds? But it would do no good to argue, and she admitted to herself that she was curious about what Hardouin d’Evreux wanted her to do. He had mentioned nothing of the sort this morning when she had greeted him as he rode into the bailey.
She followed Neville across the drawbridge, under the portcullis and into the bailey, calling a friendly greeting to the armorer and the laundress, who were pausing in the noonday sun to flirt with each other. There’d be a wedding between those two soon, she guessed. The laundress was flushed and beaming, while the armorer’s face could only be described as besotted. They’d be happy, and they’d make many babes together. The armorer was an easygoing man, Claire knew. The woman he flirted with would never bear bruises as an indication of her spouse’s temper. Ah, why couldn’t she find someone who would love her as simply and well as that?
They entered the hall and crossed it to the narrow stairway leading to the lord’s chamber above the hall. Not for Hardouin d’Evreux an apartment in the inner ward. Nothing less than Neville’s own chamber would do when their uncle came to call, but Claire noticed her brother surrendered it without a murmur on those infrequent occasions.
Nor did he indicate by so much as a trace of a grimace that he minded knocking at his own door for entrance.
“Who is it?” a flat, inflectionless voice responded.
“Neville, uncle. I’ve brought Claire.”
“Enter.”
Brother and sister did as they were bidden. Claire’s eyes refused to adjust at once to the gloom of the chamber, but finally she located her uncle behind the gleam of a fat yellow tallow candle, sitting in an ornately carved, padded wooden chair. He beckoned them into backless chairs next to him. She could feel his eyes follow her progress across the chamber.
Claire immediately took the chair farthest from Hardouin, letting Neville serve as a buffer between them. However little she trusted her brother, she trusted Hardouin, count of Evreux and earl of Tresham, even less. His eyes were still fixed on her. He sat upon the high-backed chair like a silent, overstuffed spider, and Claire felt as the fly must feel when it has put its first foot on the edge of the silken web.
“Please excuse my sister’s…ah…informal dress, uncle,” Neville said, as the silence stretched on. “She was…dealing with some of the serfs, and I thought it best not to delay our coming by having her change her clothes. I deplore her contaminating herself by dealing with those pigs, you know—they’re hardly human, after all—”
“Silence, nephew, until you have something useful to say,” droned Hardouin, without taking his eyes off Claire. Then, without preamble, he said in his dry monotone, “Neville tells me you’re unwilling to marry the baron he picked out for you.”
Claire’s fingers tightened convulsively on a fold of her skirt. Was she to have to fight the same battle all over again, and this time with a much more powerful foe? The church and the law might state that a widow had the right to marry as she chose, but a powerful man such as her uncle had much he could do to bend her to his will. Stories filled her brain of girls not even old enough to have their first flux married to vicious graybeards, and aged dames wed to callow wastrels, all to suit the whims of some noble relative. In moments, in this very room, it might well come to a choice between Fulk de Trouville and the convent—and she might not even be allowed to take the veil if Hardouin willed otherwise.
“Please, my lord,” she began in a voice that quivered a little, despite her attempts to keep it sweet and even, “’tis not that I am unwilling to marry at all, ’tis that Fulk de Trouville is not the sort of man I would have as my lord husband. He’s cruel and duplicitous—’tis even rumored he is perverse…” She looked at him through her lashes, knowing her uncle liked a meek woman. She’d be meek as milk, if it kept her from a forced marriage.
“Oh, I have no quarrel with your lack of desire to marry De Trouville,” her uncle said mildly. “He’s a blowhard and would do little to advance the fortunes of the family. In fact, if you do not wish to marry any time in the foreseeable future, I would only support your choice, my niece.”
Claire’s head shot up, and she stared at her uncle’s florid face with its lips the color of bruised grapes. Had she heard him aright? What game was he playing with her? Was he about to offer her a worse choice, thinking she would run to Fulk’s arms, grateful to be spared worse?
“Ah, I see you are suspicious,” commented her uncle, transferring his attention to a wheel of cheese upon the small table next to his chair. He cut a wedge and bit down without offering any to his nephew or niece. “Do not be, Claire. I merely meant to offer you a way to serve your family and King Stephen’s cause without marrying—a way, moreover, that will call upon the very talents your brother, here, has been shortsighted enough to complain about.”
Claire heard her brother’s intake of breath and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Neville’s hand become a fist in his lap.
Hardouin seemed to sense it too, for he raised his hand before Neville could speak. The gesture required no words; Claire saw her brother close his mouth without saying anything. Then Hardouin trained his gaze upon her once again, and Claire found herself staring into narrowed eyes as reflectionless as slate.
“You wish me to do something to help King Stephen’s cause?” she asked. “And it does not involve marrying to form an alliance?” She was still looking for the trap she was somehow sure was closing around her.
Hardouin inclined his head. “Yes, that is what I am saying. And if you will do this thing, niece, I will settle a manor upon you, and a sum that will enable you to live out your days without a husband, if you so desire. Or you may marry, providing, of course, that it is no one inimical to us.”
She nodded, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Things that sounded too good to be true usually were. She was careful to keep her face blank, and her voice without inflection, as her uncle’s always was. “What did you mean, you would call upon my talents? What talents were those, my lord?”
Her uncle took a large bite of the cheese and chewed it thoroughly before making his reply.
“I refer, niece, to your fluency in the English tongue, and your affinity for the English peasantry. And your fair color…” He leaned forward, across Neville, and touched the thick plait that fell over Claire’s breast, stroking the blond braid meaningfully for a second or two, while Claire tried not to shrink from his touch. “Don’t you see? With that yellow hair and those blue eyes you could pass for English, Claire.”
“And why,” she asked carefully, “would I want to do that?”
“You’re a clever woman, Claire. You have the ability to appear to be whatever is called for, I have observed—on other occasions, as well as this one.”
“My lord?” she questioned, mystified.
“You entered the room unaware of what I wished of you, wanting only one thing—not to be forced into a distasteful marriage. Yet you did not wish to offend me, fearing that would result in the very thing you wished to avoid. And so you assumed a guise of meekness and mildness, which you are continuing even at this moment. ’Tis a good ploy, Claire, and probably Neville was fooled. But I am not. Being the shrewd judge of character that I am, I have discerned your true nature—but it pleases me that you have the ability to pass as what you are not.”
She darted a glance at her brother, but saw that Neville was as puzzled as she was about what their uncle wanted her to do. And when had Hardouin noticed that she was not the docile woman she had always tried to portray whenever he was around? He could hardly have overheard, from the lord’s chamber over the hall, her spirited defiance of Neville’s wishes while she sat on the greensward with the children, even if the shutters had then been open! But the earl had long enjoyed a reputation for knowing everything about everyone in his life, so perhaps he had a spy or two in this household.
Evidently Hardouin felt he had played with her long enough, for then he said, “I would have you use your ability to pass as English as a means to get close to the baron of Hawkswell.”
Her stomach clenched at the name. Hawkswell, who had once married her cousin, Julia. Aloud she said, “Hawkswell? But isn’t he sworn to Matilda?”
With a snort, the earl threw the rind of the cheese into the rushes at his feet. “Well, I would hardly need anyone’s help to get close to one of Stephen’s supporters, would I? If I am on the same side, I have but to send them a message requesting a meeting, yes?”
His tone was still mild, but Claire felt the sarcasm strike her like the lash of a whip. She could feel her face flame in response.
“No, I suppose not…” she began. “My lord, surely you’re not suggesting anything dishonorable…that I…” She made herself say it. “You don’t mean you want me to act the whore, and obtain Hawkswell’s secrets by sharing his bed?”
Hardouin threw back his massive head and laughed. The sound seemed to echo off the stone walls of the room. “Hardly! From what Neville tells me, you’re a cold fish who has no desire to experience the joys of the marriage bed again, so your trying to become Alain of Hawkswell’s mistress would be an exercise in futility, and ‘twould not achieve our goal, would it?”
Claire felt as if she had been punched in the belly. With tears stinging her eyes, she turned to glare at Neville, but her brother was suddenly preoccupied with examining his fingernails and would not meet her gaze.
She would not rise to the bait, Claire resolved, she would not. She blinked back the tears. “But you said you wished me to get close to Hawkswell. How, and to what end?”
From his startled smile she guessed her uncle was pleased that she was ignoring his jab.
“The baron of Hawkswell controls the Hawkswell Valley, an important piece of land that guards the southern approach to London. He has been a relentless warrior in Matilda’s service, one of her most trusted vassals. He has not bent, no matter how the winds of change have blown in Stephen’s direction, no matter what favors and promises were used to lure him.”
“An honorable man,” Claire murmured. “How unusual.”
Hardouin raised a bushy eyebrow, but he went on. “Stephen wants him.”
“Then he needs to catch him away from his castle, and to have a large enough force with him to subdue Hawkswell. Why are you speaking to me, a mere woman, about this?”
Her uncle ignored her sarcasm. “Nay, I didn’t mean Stephen wanted to capture him, Claire. He could do that, easily enough. But Stephen wants him to be his man.”
Claire shrugged. “And how can I possibly help in that regard? He is a widower, but you said this did not involve marriage for me, is that not so? And since you do not expect me to seduce him and I am not willing to do so anyway, what is it, then, that you wish me to do?”
Hardouin leaned forward, past Neville, and took her hand in his big fleshy one. She tried not to squirm, though she longed to yank her hand away.
“Claire, Claire…you give yourself such a limited role as a woman! There are more places than in bed where you can use your womanly wiles! But never mind. I have developed a masterful scheme based on your talents and your English appearance, niece.”
Claire nodded, unable to guess where this was leading. What he said was true enough. Normans tended to have dark hair and eyes, but she had always been told she resembled her Saxon granddam.
Willing herself to leave her hand quietly in his, she let him go on speaking.
“The baron’s wife gave him a child before she died of a fever last year, a daughter. He already had a bastard son who lives with him. From all I have heard he is a devoted father, so they may well be Lord Alain’s Achilles’ heel.”
Claire rubbed her forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache. “Perhaps I do lack imagination, my lord, but I still don’t see where this is leading.”
Hardouin gave her a wolfish smile. “What I wish you to do, niece, is to go to Hawkswell Castle in the guise of an English wench, and become nursemaid to his children.”
Claire let her jaw drop. Perhaps she had overestimated her powerful uncle. “And spy on him thus? My lord, he is hardly apt to drop state secrets in front of his children and their nurse!”
Hardouin clucked disapprovingly at her. “Of course not, Claire. Nay, what I had in mind for you to do, once you’re in a position of trust with my lord of Hawkswell, is to kidnap his heir and the other whelp and bring them to us. The baron will find it advantageous to switch sides, right enough, if we hold his children hostage.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_7ddbde8b-82fe-5001-ac03-f5724848ac4e)
Claire gasped. “You—you wish me to abduct his children?”
Hardouin smiled broadly. “Just so, niece! Isn’t it a brilliant plan? Who would suspect a young nursemaid? You will go in, gain his trust and that of his whelps, and one day, you will stroll out of his castle with them on the pretext of gathering herbs or some such idea, and voilà! You will bring them right to my waiting arms! He’ll come over to our side, right enough, especially if I hold his heir! Close your mouth, Neville, you look like the village idiot.”
“But my lord, I hardly think—” Claire began, her mind whirling with a hundred reasons why the count’s plan couldn’t possibly work.
“What, Claire, objections? Can it be you do not want to avenge your friend Julia, his dead wife?”
Leave it to Hardouin to ferret out the one reason why she was honor-bound to agree to his plan, Claire thought dully. But in spite of what Alain of Hawkswell had done, the very idea of stealing a man’s children…
“And if I refuse?”
Hardouin looked grim. “Then I think you had better resign yourself to wedding Fulk,” he said.
“But—but you said you had no quarrel with my unwillingness to marry him…that he was a blowhard! You said you supported my choice not to marry at all, if that was what I wanted!” she cried indignantly, feeling her face flush with rage.
Hardouin’s eyes narrowed, and Claire could see a small vein throbbing in his forehead. “I have said you need not marry, Claire, but I have no patience with unproductive leeches. If you refuse to be of any service whatsoever to the head of your family and our cause, then I would at least expect you to marry and remove yourself from our care,” he ground out.
She felt her face flame at being called a leech. “I believe I would rather take the veil after all,” she countered, lifting her chin and looking him right in the eye. Never again, she had promised herself, would she allow herself to be coerced into carrying out a man’s will. She wasn’t sure at all that entering a convent was preferable to agreeing to Hardouin’s plan, but seeing his implacable gaze, she rebelled. There would be opportunity to escape from a convent, surely, once she was safely away from her uncle’s control…
“I think not,” he said. “No convent in the land will take you if I say nay.”
He meant it, she saw. And she had no doubt he had that power. Hardouin would see that she had no dowry to give a religious foundation, and what abbess would take her if a powerful male relative opposed her entry?
Besides, a voice murmured inside her head, was it not true that she owed something to Julia’s memory?
“But what if there already are nursemaids aplenty?” she asked skeptically.
His returning smile told her he knew her question meant she was submitting. “My spy tells me there is but one old beldam caring for Hawkswell’s whelps. She’ll no doubt welcome the help.”
Claire shrugged. “How very convenient. And I will be free once I deliver my lord of Hawkswell’s children to you? You will then give me the manor—in writing?”
Hardouin nodded, chuckling. “So suspicious! So earnest! Yes, you’ll be free as a bird, niece. A woman of property.”
It was an unfortunate comparison, for just inches from Hardouin stood the perch on which the earl kept his falcon, a peregrine. Claire glanced over at the bird, seeing the jewel-studded hood over the falcon’s head, keeping it blind and relatively tranquil, and the jesses with little silver bells at her feet. As if the bird of prey sensed Claire’s scrutiny, she bated on her perch, setting the tiny bells tinkling. Hardouin’s falcon was only free when she had been launched after some prey, and even then the lure of food kept her returning to the earl. Claire did not want to be like that tethered falcon. Having her own manor would be a start.
Alain of Hawkswell’s castle was a day’s journey away. Situated at the entrance to the valley that led straight to London, it was directly in front of the best ford over the Hawkswell River, which cut through the downs. There was forest on the west side, but anyone who attempted to go around the fortress to ford the river was exposed to those who paced the wall walk of Hawkswell Castle. If any would cross the valley, then, they must have the consent of the castle’s lord.
It was a commanding position, thought Claire, studying it from the safety of a copse of oaks. Even now she could see a pair of sentries marching back and forth on the wall walk, their nasalled helmets obliterating their features. The drawbridge was down, the portcullis raised, and with the great wooden planking extending over the moat, Claire was reminded of a huge, hungry mouth.
She shivered, though the day was warm enough despite threatening clouds. Was the castle waiting to devour her? Would they see through her disguise of an English peasant right away, and take her prisoner? Hardouin would never allow Neville to ransom her, she knew; money was better spent, he would say, on something useful to King Stephen’s cause than on a useless and rebellious female. She would be left to her fate, which for a friendless female would be too awful to imagine. She had better be so convincing at playing the English peasant that Alain of Hawkswell would never guess she was as Norman as he.
Suddenly something struck Claire on the tip of her nose, startling her, and bounced off the toe of her crude leather shoe. She saw that it was but an acorn, and relaxed, only to feel another strike her head, and then another.
Was there a squirrel above her, dislodging them? She looked upward, expecting to spy a twitching, tiny gray body among the leafy upper branches, only to have another acorn impact her cheek with stinging accuracy. She ducked and covered her head with a muttered curse. No squirrel had so accurate an aim! But who?—
Then she heard a smothered but unmistakable giggle from high among the branches.
Remembering just in time that she was supposed to be a English peasant, Claire called, “Saints! Who be up there? Stop that right this minute!”
She heard another giggle, then a small face framed by unruly dark hair appeared from behind the thick upper trunk of the tree. “Sorry,” the little girl said in Frenchaccented English, staring down at Claire. “I hope I didn’t hurt you!”
She looked so anxious that Claire felt compelled to reassure her. “Nay, I be not hurt, girl. Ye’ve a right keen aim, though!” she said, rubbing her stinging nose. “What’re ye doing up there?”
“Hiding,” the little girl replied.
“From who?”
“From my old nurse, Ivy, who said I must take a bath. I don’t wish to take a bath, so I stole away to the wood. I’ll go back when I’m ready,” she announced primly, and then her gamine face crinkled into a grin. “By then she’ll have forgotten all about it. What’s your name?”
“I be called Haesel,” Claire said, using the typically English name she had chosen before departing Coverly Castle. “What’s yers?” she asked, though she had a strong suspicion that she already knew.
“I am Lady Peronelle of Hawkswell, only daughter of the lord of Hawkswell,” she announced with a grand gesture that nearly caused her to lose her balance and tumble headlong out of the tree.
“Oh, be careful, my lady!” Claire cried, alarmed. “Don’t fall! Mayhap ye’d better come down!”
“Don’t worry! I never fall,” Peronelle boasted after she had steadied her position. “But I will come down, because I wish to see you better. You’re very pretty, you know. I like you.”
Claire watched as the little girl began her descent, ready to catch her if she should slip. But Peronelle was surefooted, cautiously placing slippered feet on succeeding branches, then hanging from the lowest by her arms for a moment before dropping to the ground.
Claire congratulated herself. She had already met the first of her “targets,” as Hardouin had coldly referred to them before she had left his presence, and the child liked her already. She suppressed her reproachful conscience. She was not going to hurt the children she was plotting to abduct, and neither was her uncle, she reminded herself. They would be well cared for—in fact she would probably be the one to care for them—until they could be returned to their father.
Peronelle straightened and brushed dirt from her blue kirtle as she peered up at Claire. “You’re tall,” she informed her.
“Aye, my lady. My brother called me Beanpole, when we was young,” Claire said, remembering to speak like a serf. What she had said was true—Beanpole was but one of the hurtful names Neville had called her. He had never apologized, even after her tall frame had filled out.
“Beanpole?” The nickname sent Peronelle into another fit of giggles.
The child’s laughter had an infectious quality to it, and Claire felt herself smiling back. “Ye speak English well, my lady,” she told the child.
“Thank you,” Peronelle said. “My old nurse is English. I spoke English before I spoke French, she says.”
Claire’s heart sank. The child’s nurse was English! She’d never be able to convince a real Englishwoman that she was English too! A real Englishwoman would see right through her pose and become suspicious. But she had to try…Perhaps, since Peronelle had so easily escaped her nurse, the old woman was deaf and therefore could be fooled.
“Would you like to come back to the castle to meet Ivy?” Peronelle invited, gesturing to the gray mass of stone rising behind her.
Claire nodded, praying that the old nurse was both hard of hearing and unsuspicious. “Your father won’t m—”
“So there you are, Perry,” came a perturbed young voice from behind them, speaking in French. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! And who is this?”
Claire whirled and found herself facing a lad of perhaps six years, who had come from deeper in the wood. He eyed her suspiciously. “Who are you? Who said you could talk to my sister?” he demanded.
So this was the boy, the bastard, Claire thought. This was the child whose birth had broken Julia’s heart. She stared at him, wondering if he took his brown hair and eyes and his sturdy build from Alain of Hawkswell or from the serf woman who had given him birth. Claire had never seen Julia’s husband; Julia had wedded Hawkswell at his castle and only her immediate family had been present. Julia had called Lord Alain swarthy before they had wed, but her rare letters had never described any further the man her father had commanded her to marry.
“I said, who are you, woman?” the boy repeated, switching to English and lifting his chin to stare up at her with a challenging glint in his eye.
“I might ask the same of ye,” Claire countered, his precociously imperious tone causing her to forget the appropriate humility.
“I asked you first.” He switched back to French. “Peronelle, how many times have I told you not to go into the wood by yourself? There could be outlaws who might hurt you,” he added, with a meaningful glance at Claire.
“Haesel’s no outlaw,” the girl insisted, her hands on her hips. “She’s nice, and I like her, so you stop being so horrid to her. She’s going to come back to the castle with us and meet Ivy.”
“Why?” the boy asked, turning back to eye Claire suspiciously.
“Why not?” Peronelle retorted. “Because I want her to, and that’s all you need to know, Guerin.” She turned back to Haesel, and spoke again in English. “This is my older brother, Guerin, Haesel. He doesn’t mean to be so rude, I’m sure.”
Claire saw the boy stiffen and look affronted. Clearly she must defuse the situation if she was going to win the trust of both children.
“My lady, I’m sure he just means to protect ye, like a good elder brother should. He be right, ye know. There might be bad folk about outside the walls of yer castle. Ye should not be wanderin’ around with no one to protect ye.” She curtsied to the boy. “Ye’re son of Alain of Hawkswell? I be pleased t’ meet ye.”
Mollified, the boy nodded. “I am Guerin of Hawkswell. You are called Haesel? Well, come along if you wish, but I have to take my sister back to our nurse now. It’s going to rain soon, and Father is due home at any moment, Perry. Ivy’s frantic that he not find you missing again. She’s afraid he’ll be angry, and you’re a wicked girl to worry her so.”
So Alain of Hawkswell tries to rule his nursery just as firmly as he did his wife. A bully, just as I thought.
But Peronelle was not at all intimidated by her half brother’s announcement. “Oh, Guerin, you’re as much a worrier as Ivy is. Father would never say a cross word to Ivy. Come on, Haesel.”
A thought struck her as hard as the acorn had hit her cheek minutes before. She had both of Hawkswell’s children with her! Perhaps she could summon the foot soldiers who had escorted her here and hand over the children without ever entering the castle and exposing herself to danger! But if they were watching her from cover, she saw no sign of them. Probably they had already sought shelter in the nearest alehouse, damn their black souls, she thought bleakly. She picked up the edge of her skirt and followed the children, who had already set off in the direction of the castle.
As they walked, Claire stared at Peronelle, seeing Julia’s fine bone structure in the girl and the same tiptilted nose that Claire had often teased her childhood friend about. But Julia had been blond, so Peronelle’s nearly black hair must be a legacy from her father. She saw little resemblance between Peronelle and her half brother; Peronelle was as slight and delicate as Guerin was sturdy and strong-boned.
Did Peronelle and Guerin know they were but half sister and half brother? There was certainly nothing deferential in the boy’s manner to indicate he knew he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, and that his sister was Alain of Hawkswell’s only legitimate child. Had their sire let them believe that Julia had given birth to both of them? If so, how long before some servant let slip the truth?
They came out of sheltering trees and Claire saw Hawkswell Castle before her in all its glory. It was larger than Coverly, both in breadth and height, its square gray walls rising twice as high. It seemed to touch the lowering sky. Atop its high towers sat turret rooms, clearly defensive in purpose. There was an uncompromising air about the way the stone fortress sat on its motte, as if by its very presence challenging anyone and everyone who came near.
“Come on, Haesel! Don’t be afraid!” called Peronelle, who had already skipped across the wooden planking.
Uncompromising. Pray God its lord was not so uncompromising, thought Claire, with a glance at Guerin, who stood in the middle of the drawbridge, looking curiously back at her.
Her crude leather shoe touched the wood of the drawbridge. Once I cross over that bridge, my part in the plot to capture Hawkswell’s children begins, she thought. At this point I can still turn tail and run, and I will have done nothing but tell two children a harmless fable. Once I reach the other side, I am committed.
But did she have any real choice? If she failed to carry out Hardouin’s command, she would be sacrificing her own freedom, for she had no illusions that she could survive on her own indefinitely. And she believed Hardouin when he had told her he would hunt her down like a wounded doe if she tried to play him false. She took a step upon the drawbridge, then another.
Just as she reached midway over the water-filled chasm, however, the thunder of hoofbeats reached their ears, and she turned around.
“Father!” Peronelle shouted, pointing to a horseman riding a huge red destrier at the head of eight mounted menat-arms. The party was cantering toward the castle from the direction of the woods. It was too late to run.
As they drew closer, Claire saw that two of the horsemen’s hands were bound and that their horses’ reins were held by those riding at either side of them. She suppressed a gasp as she recognized them as Ivo and Jean, two of Hardouin’s men-at-arms. She avoided looking at them as the man at the head of the procession reined in his horse just in front of them.
He wore mail, as did the others, and the flat-topped helm with its jutting nasal shadowed his features just as theirs did. The fineness and shine of his mail and the emblem on his shield proclaimed him the baron of Hawkswell, even if Peronelle had not gone rushing headlong across the drawbridge toward him, calling “Father! Father!”
The child was heedless of the way the destrier laid back his ears at the sight of her running toward him.
“Peronelle!” cried Claire, dashing after the child even as the man on the enormous stallion fought to control the rearing beast. She gave little thought to her own danger, for her mind was full of the horrible image of the child’s lifeless body, crushed by one swipe of a powerful hoof. Reaching the girl, she grabbed her and pulled her out of harm’s way.
Moments later, Hawkswell managed to subdue the stallion. “Peronelle!” he shouted down at the girl. “How many times have I told you my war-horse is not some fat, friendly pony like your Dacy? You must never come near him, and especially not like that! You might have been killed, Peronelle!” He tossed the reins to the nearest manat-arms and dismounted, striding over to where Peronelle was huddled in Claire’s arms, weeping.
Claire bit back a sharp retort. She was supposed to be a mere English serf, therefore she could not give this monster of a father the tongue-lashing he deserved. But as the little girl continued to tremble and hide her face against Claire’s kirtle, she knew she had to say something.
“She be frightened of yer tone, my lord, as much as the horse,” Claire murmured, trying to see the features of the man behind the jutting nasal.
A pair of fierce dark eyes narrowed as they fixed on her. “Who might you be, woman?” he answered her in heavily accented English. “And more to the point, who are you to tell me how to speak to my own child?”
Claire looked down at the bent head of the child clutching her skirts, hoping to appear appropriately humble, when she was actually trying to conceal the seething anger he had provoked in her by his high-handed attitude.
“I be Haesel, my lord,” she said evenly, and added, when a glance from beneath her lashes told her he was continuing to favor her with a piercing regard, “please, my lord, the child…”
Just then she noticed a younger man, on a horse next to Lord Alain, smiling encouragingly at her. He must be a squire, she thought. She liked him instantly, if only for his friendly gaze in the face of Hawkswell’s disapproval.
Hawkswell shifted his eyes to Peronelle, and his gaze softened. Kneeling on one knee, he pulled off his helm and laid it on the ground with a clunk before holding his arms open. “Perry, come here, daughter,” Alain of Hawkswell said, his voice soft and coaxing.
Peronelle raised her head and peered at her father, knuckling her hand over her tear-flooded eyes for a moment before leaving Claire’s side. Then she threw herself into his arms.
In spite of her anger, Claire found herself oddly moved at the sight of the powerful Norman lord, embracing his daughter, his eyes closed as if he breathed a thankful prayer.
“Peronelle, Peronelle, don’t you know you are the most precious thing on earth to me? I would die a thousand deaths, my sweet daughter, if any harm came to you, don’t you know that? That is why I shouted—I was so fearful that you would be hurt before I could turn my stallion away from you.”
His voice, as he soothed his frightened child, was musical, deep and resonant, like a warm embrace. Claire found herself wanting to hear more of it.
“I just wanted to see you, Father! I’m sorry.”
“I know, my girl. I know. It is over now, and you will never, never come so near my destrier again, yes?”
“No, Father, never!”
All this time Guerin had been hovering uncertainly in the background, his face anxious. Remember me, Father, his eyes seemed to plead. What about me, your son?
Claire watched as Hawkswell raised his head and acknowledged Guerin with a nod. “Guerin, you were just going over the drawbridge when we rode up. Where were you going, when I gave strict instructions for both of you to stay behind the castle walls?”
She saw the boy’s shoulders tense. “I…I had gone to fetch my sister, my lord father.”
Alain of Hawkswell’s face darkened again. “Oh? And from whence did you fetch her, Guerin?”
Claire ached for the boy as she saw him clench his hand against a fold of his tunic and look away from his father’s cold gaze.
“From…the wood, my lord father. I found her at the edge of the wood…talking to this woman here,” he said, pointing at Claire.
Hawkswell’s jaw clenched. “Peronelle, I gave you strict instructions not to venture outside the walls, and Guerin, I gave your sister into your care. You know how adept she is at evading your nurse. Why did you—?”
“But Father!” interrupted Peronelle. “I know I was naughty to run away from my nurse just because of a bath, but you see, I met Haesel in the wood! Isn’t she wonderfully pretty, Father? I was taking her to meet Ivy. I want her to be my nurse too, and help Ivy! I would obey her, Father, always! Oh please, Father, say she may come and live with us, and—”
Alain of Hawkswell laid a finger across his daughter’s mouth to gently stem her torrent of words. “Hush, Peronelle, you chatter like a magpie.”
He scowled as his gaze shifted to Claire and swept over her, assessing her from the top of her head to the tips of her rough shoes.
She felt herself flushing while he continued to stare, and forced herself to drop her own eyes to keep portraying the humble serf. It felt as if those dark, narrowed eyes could see through to her very soul and glimpse the deceit that resided there. Claire felt his eyes drop lower, to linger on her breasts and hips before coming back to her face. She felt her cheeks flame.
“Peronelle,” he began, still pinning Claire with his gaze, “you have a trusting heart, daughter, but we do not know this woman—”
“I know her, Father, and so does Guerin! Isn’t she pretty, Papa?”
The lord and his daughter were speaking in French. Hawkswell glanced at her again. “Yes, she has a certain…comeliness, in a common sort of way.”
Was he testing her to see if she spoke the language? She knew she must give no evidence that she had understood their rapid speech, but how dared this man speak so disparagingly of her, as if she were not there, and stare at her as if she were a whore? She longed to slap his arrogant, high-cheekboned face.
“We are not taking her into the castle, Peronelle. She may very well be a runaway serf, and you already have a nurse. Your duty is to obey Ivy, as it is to obey me. I have enough to worry about already, with these prisoners,” he said, jerking his head back to indicate the bound men whom Claire had entirely forgotten ever since Peronelle had rushed at the stallion.
“Who are they, Father?” Guerin asked, still obviously aching for his father’s attention.
“I came upon a party of them leaving the alewife’s place in the wood, and as they could not explain themselves, I think we can assume they were a party of Stephen’s mercenaries. We killed three of them when they tried to run, but this pair surrendered. They’ll cool their heels in that locked room below the cellar until I’m satisfied about what they were doing on my lands.”
He turned back to Claire, and his voice was coldly dismissive as he switched back to English. “Begone, woman, and be thankful I do not jail you with yon brigands.”
Claire’s heart sank. Was she to come this close, only to fail? “But my lord,” she began.
There was a rumble of thunder, and suddenly the rain, which had been imminent all day, started falling in sheets.
“Papa, you must let her in now, you must!” Peronelle cried. “’Tis raining, and she’ll catch her death of lung fever, just as Mama did!”
Alain of Hawkswell’s face went white at the mention of his dead wife, but Guerin seemed not to notice, adding his pleas and surprising Claire. “Please, Father, just for the night! ’Tis our Christian duty! You cannot turn her out in the storm like an animal!”
Alain de Hawkswell scowled again as the rain streaked down his cheeks. “Very well, I’ll not debate it further out here in the rain. She may sup in the hall and bed down there, but on the morrow she goes, do I make myself clear? I cannot take into my household every beggar that shows up at the gates. Take her in with you and get dry by the fire before you go up, and beg Ivy’s pardon for being such a wicked girl, Peronelle.”
Claire longed to fling his stingy hospitality back in his face, but too much depended on her getting into his household. At least she had gained entry for the night—and perhaps she would find a way to stay if fortune smiled on her.
“Thank ye, my lord,” she said, and hoped she appeared the picture of gratitude. “…She has a certain…comeliness, in a common sort of way,” indeed. I’ll teach you the folly of judging by appearances, Alain of Hawkswell.
Chapter Three (#ulink_a8cbd464-945b-5481-ad2e-cc1bc05317ed)
Alain of Hawkswell’s eyes followed his children and the young woman as they headed for the spiral stone staircase at the far end of the great hall after warming themselves at the fire. The woman his children had called Haesel followed as Peronelle and Guerin led the way. Peronelle was chattering excitedly, turning back as she said something to Haesel. Guerin was quieter, as usual, but even he had a look of pride on his face as he looked around, obviously urging Haesel onward.
Alain could not see her face, but he studied the erect back and the grace with which her long legs took her up the stairs. She lifted the edge of her threadbare skirt to more easily climb, and he caught a glimpse of a slender, well-turned ankle. As she ascended, the end of her golden braid caressed the small of her back, swaying to her motion.
Conscious of a stirring in his loins, he turned away from the sight, disgusted with himself. But even after he could no longer see her, his mind repeated the vision of Haesel warming herself at his fire. Unaware of his continued scrutiny, the peasant woman had stretched and flexed her arms as she stood before the roaring fire to dry herself, the wet homespun of her bodice clearly revealing the outline of her breasts. Unbidden and unwelcome, a vision came to him of Haesel stretched out in his bed, all that golden hair unbraided and fanned out over his pillow as she opened her arms to receive him. Julia had been blond too, but her hair had been pale and lifeless next to this woman’s golden tresses.
Peste, but why was he thinking of her in that way? It wasn’t as if he had not had a woman since Julia’s untimely death…Gylda, who dwelled in the village, made him welcome whenever he came to her. He was not a man who could be led around by his loins. Now that he had been widowed, he satisfied his carnal needs only when the clamoring of his body forced him to seek Gylda out. Once he had spent himself upon the accommodating peasant woman—on rare occasions even staying the night in her rude cottage, coupling with her more than once—he could return to his life as the baron of Hawkswell, lord of a strategic castle on the road to London.
One day, when the empress was secure on her throne, he supposed he would be given another heiress as a reward for his loyalty. It was the way of royalty to want to cement fealty with marriage alliances. It was for the same reason he had been given Julia’s hand, and they could have been as happy as most noble couples, if only…But it was no use thinking that way.
He had visited Gylda only two days ago…Then why was he so disturbed by a pair of blue eyes, a wealth of golden hair and a lush mouth that lured him to gaze lower, at the breasts that strained her bodice and the narrow waist he could span with his hands?
Perhaps he was merely bothered by the fact that she obviously didn’t like him, he mused as he sipped the wine his steward had brought him. He had sensed that fact even before he had forbidden his children to bring her into the castle, and he wondered why it was so. Perhaps she just didn’t like the Normans, either because they had been the masters of England for more than seventy years, or because she had suffered some personal loss at their hands—her virginity? Was she fleeing the very man who had stolen her innocence?
For she was no virgin, he had sensed. There was something about the bold way she had looked him in the eye, before dropping her gaze, that told him she had known at least one man intimately. And hadn’t liked what she had known.
All the more reason to make sure she was sent on her way on the morrow. She didn’t like him, and that being true, there was no need for her to remain within the walls of his castle after tonight. It was likely she had not even wished to stay. It was probably one of Peronelle’s impulsive ideas, and the woman had seen the chance of shelter from the coming storm that now sent rain drumming against the lead roof high overhead.
That Guerin had chimed in in support of Haesel’s visit had surprised Alain, but only momentarily. The serious young lad had a tender side, always bringing in strays and wounded birds and expecting Alain to help him succor them. Alain was proud of what he had taught the boy, and he knew he was going to miss him next year when he was old enough to be sent to another noble household for fostering—if the unrest that had threatened the realm ever since the empress had claimed the throne died down enough to permit him to send Guerin anywhere. Alain had resolved he would not send the boy into danger—he owed Guerin’s mother that much.
All at once Alain heard a shriek overhead, a shriek that could only have been Peronelle’s, and then the sound of weeping. His hand went to his hip, where the hilt of his sword had rested only minutes ago until Verel, his squire, had divested him of his mail. But it was not there, for he had changed into a long, comfortable tunic with a plain leather belt. He dropped the half-empty wine cup in the rushes and ran for the stairs. Good Lord, had the serf woman he had let into his hall turned vicious the moment she was out of his sight?
But before he could reach the curving stone steps, a white-faced Peronelle appeared around the corner of the stairs, followed by Guerin and Haesel, who were equally pale.
Peronelle ran down the steps and catapulted herself against him, throwing her arms around his legs as if all the demons of hell chased her.
“Perry, what is it? What’s she done to you?” he asked, even as his eyes met Haesel’s. “What did you do to her, woman?” he accused in English.
The Englishwoman blanched still further. “N-nothing, my lord!” she stammered. “It be the old woman, the nurse! We…we found her…dead, my lord!”
At first he stared at her, unable to make sense of her halting English words. But then, as their meaning sank into his brain, he ran past her and Guerin, who stood as if paralyzed halfway down the steps, and into the chamber in which the children and their nurse slept.
The old woman sagged on a padded chair near the unshuttered window, some mending project in her lap. Her head lolled against the high back of the chair, and her eyes were open, but she saw nothing. Even before he reached her side and took hold of her wrist, it was obvious from her dusky blue coloring that Ivy was dead. Her flesh was already cooling, and no pulse jumped against his fingers as he felt for a heartbeat. After a few seconds, he gently closed the old nurse’s eyes and said a prayer for her soul.
By the robe of the Virgin, why must the children have been the ones to find her? He imagined Peronelle and Guerin recoiling as they caught sight of those sightless, staring eyes, that slack mouth, and he shuddered in horror. Poor babes…
The old nurse had just recently reported a cessation of the nightmares that had plagued both children, but especially his daughter, after the death of Julia. And now it was likely the nightmares would begin all over again—and they would have no nurse to comfort them.
Unless…But no. He had already decided that having the young Englishwoman anywhere near him would only lead to trouble. He was not going to be foolish just because she was here precisely when his children needed another female to look after them. There were plenty of women in the village who would gladly take over as nurse to the lord’s children, yes, and be glad for a position in the castle that would give them a better existence than they had had. He would not court trouble by giving that position to a stranger.
Alain found the children huddled against Haesel in front of the fire, sobbing. She had her arms around them and was swaying softly, rocking them.
He saw Peronelle look up at the sound of his footsteps, her eyes betraying a wild hope.
“I am sorry, but it is true,” he said, keeping his voice gentle. “Ivy is dead.” As Peronelle’s renewed wails rose around him, he said, loudly enough that he hoped she would hear him, “She did not suffer, Perry. She was old, you know, and ’twas likely her heart just gave out. ‘Twas like falling asleep for her, children.” He included Guerin in his gaze. The boy was trying so hard not to cry, but his lip trembled and he shook, and Alain felt sorry for him. “’Tis all right to weep, Guerin, when someone we love dies. But we must remember Ivy is with God, for she was a good and pious woman, and she is happy in heaven.”
As Guerin gave in and the tears began to flood his cheeks, Peronelle raised tear-flooded dark eyes to Alain. “I want my Ivy! What will we do without her, Father? She’s been here forever—s-since before I was born!” She choked on a sob, and buried her face again against Haesel’s waist. He saw the Englishwoman caress the trembling shoulders of his daughter.
What indeed? he thought. Since they were without a mother, it was a question that would have to be resolved quickly, for they were not old enough to fend for themselves, and he could not always be with them.
“We’ll find someone in the village,” he promised, avoiding Haesel’s troubled eyes, worrying that although she could not speak French, she would certainly hear her name mentioned and wonder what they were saying about her. “I’m sure there is a good woman in the village who would like to come to the castle and be your nurse—”
“I want Haesel,” came Peronelle’s muffled voice.
“Nay, Haesel does not belong to this fief, and there must be somewhere she is obligated to be,” he said, giving a stern look at Haesel that warned her not to speak. “We must not keep Haesel from her duty.”
“But she’d stay here, if you asked her, Father. She’s already here, and I like her. Why can’t she stay? She says she is a free woman,” Guerin argued manfully, then sniffled. “Please say that she may remain as our nurse! Perry has already said she would obey her, and I will, too.”
There was little chance Haesel had told the truth about being a free woman, but without a brand on her forehead proclaiming that she had run away before and been caught, he had no way of proving it. And now his children were watching him, their eyes pleading.
He saw her watching him too, but he could not read her gaze. Certainly there was no pleading there. She was too proud for that.
He must stand fast, he knew, for his own sake if not his children’s. This woman was trouble. But he found himself murmuring instead, “What say you, Haesel? Are you willing to stay and be my children’s nurse? To be trustworthy and kind to Perry and Guerin day in and day out? It is not a position to assume lightly, woman, for my children are very important to me, as you have seen, and I would be merciless to anyone who harmed them.”
Some cloud passed over those blue eyes as she faced him, darkening them and then vanishing before she opened her mouth and said, “I will stay, my lord, and care for yer children. And I thank ye, my lord.”
He concentrated on Peronelle’s and Guerin’s expressions of joy, so that the Englishwoman would not see how pleased he was that she would stay.
“Very well. Children, perhaps you and Haesel could go to the kitchen for a while—no doubt Cook has some fresh-baked manchet loaves that you may sample. Then later you may help Haesel get settled in your chamber while I see to the prisoners.” In an undertone he added to Haesel, “I will see that the old nurse’s body is taken to the chapel while you are gone.”
“Very wise ye be, my lord,” Haesel whispered back. Then, just as the children began to tug at her hands, she smiled slightly before she allowed herself to be pulled after them.
He felt as if Rouquin, his mighty red destrier, had just kicked him.
Chapter Four (#ulink_ce6c92ad-c2c3-54d7-9ed8-ae6e4341fe0d)
An hour later, after Claire had been told Ivy’s body had been moved, she and the children left the kitchens, crossed the bailey and again ascended the stairs to their bedchamber. The children’s faces were besmeared with traces of the fresh butter that had been spread on the bread they had devoured warm from the oven, but beneath the shiny surface the cheeks of both children were pale as they hesitated at the threshold of the chamber they had shared with their old nurse.
“Is it…is sh-she gone?” Peronelle asked fearfully, her hands covering her face. But Claire saw that the child was peering between her fingers at the chair in which the old nurse had been sprawled, almost as if she expected the body of the nurse to reappear. Guerin, behind her, kept his hands at his sides, but Claire noticed his eyes kept darting into the shadowy corners of the room, as if he thought Ivy might be hiding there.
“Yes, she be gone. They took her body to the chapel, Peronelle,” Claire said, remembering to speak as an ignorant English serf woman would.
“But her spirit,” persisted Guerin, “what of it? Her soul? Will she come back—and haunt this chamber, because she died here?”
Claire felt a rush of sympathy for the frightened children, who were suddenly bereft of the woman who had been as a mother to them. She was sorry they had been the ones to find their beloved nurse dead, but perhaps it was really better that way, if one took the long view. Death would have a reality for them that it had not had for her when she’d been just a little girl—a bit younger than Peronelle. Claire had been told her mother had “gone away for a long time,” when in reality she had died in childbirth along with the son she had been struggling to give birth to. But Claire wanted them to remember their old nurse with joy, not with terror.
“Nay, she’ll not haunt this room, Guerin!” she said bracingly, laying a hand on both children’s shoulders. “How could she, a good woman like that, who loved ye both so much? She’ll go right to heaven to be with the saints, she will. But she’ll look down from heaven on ye here, and intercede with our Lord for ye. But ye’ll always remember how good she were to ye here in this chamber, won’t ye—taking care of ye, sleeping at night with ye…So in a way a part of her will always be here, in a good way, don’t ye see?”
The boy nodded, and the furrows in his forehead relaxed.
“But will they leave her body in the chapel? So we can see it there forever and ever?” queried Peronelle, sounding half hopeful, half frightened at the thought.
“No, lovey,” she said, kneeling in the rushes so that she and Peronelle were on the same level. “The castle women will wash her and lay her out on a bier, and someone will stay with the body until it’s buried.”
“Buried?” repeated Peronelle, horrified. “Put in the ground? She couldn’t breathe! I won’t let them!” she cried, her small body tensing, as if she intended to run back downstairs and prevent such an awful thing from happening.
Claire caught her gently by the arms. “Listen, child. Remember I told ye yer Ivy was already in heaven? ’Tis just her earthly body they’ll be burying, Peronelle. She’s already left that worn-out old body, and she has a new body, a perfect one that isn’t old, that won’t ever die,” she said, praying the child would believe her.
“And her hands won’t have all those painful knots, and in heaven she won’t get the dropsy whenever she eats salt pork like she did on earth, Peronelle,” Guerin put in. “Why, I’ll vow her hair is long and curly black as a raven’s wing, just as she always told us it was when she was a girl.”
Claire felt the moment when Peronelle’s rigid body sagged against hers, and she gave Guerin a grateful smile, silently blessing Guerin for his help.
Peronelle took a deep, shuddering breath. “That’s good that she’s all beautiful and happy in heaven, but I’ll miss her.” Then she started. “But I’m glad you’re going to be our new nurse, Haesel! Here, let me show you which bed is yours,” she said, tugging Claire’s hand and moving forward into the room.
They didn’t see Lord Alain again until just before sunset, when all the castle folk gathered for supper. Peronelle and Guerin, their faces washed, and wearing fresh clothing, led the way into the great hall and headed straight for the dais, where their father waited at the high table.
As they went, Claire took the time to look at her surroundings, which she had not done when she first entered. Hawkswell’s great hall, like Coverly’s, was two-storied and rectangular in shape. Old banners, their colors faded, hung from the ceiling rafters, and tapestries hung on the walls. The high-set windows faced the open eastern wall; the western wall formed part of the inner curtain of the castle, so the lighting that evening was from candles set at intervals on the tables and torches set in wall brackets. The rushes beneath her feet were relatively new, she noted approvingly, and their sweet smell hinted at mint and tansy strewn among them.
“Ah! There you are!” Alain said to his children. “Did you not hear the supper horn a few minutes ago?” He watched the three as they drew near.
“Yes, my lord father, but Haesel said we must change our tunics, for we looked rumpled as serf children who’d been plowing the fields!” Guerin informed him, using English where his father had spoken in French, a courtesy that warmed Claire’s heart.
Lord Alain regarded his son solemnly as Guerin stopped below the high table. “That is true,” he said, speaking also in English, “but mayhap next time you will make the magical transformation earlier? You have kept a score of Hawkswell’s hungry inhabitants waiting, my son. A chivalrous man considers others before himself. Next time we will not wait on you.”
Claire struggled to keep her face expressionless as she saw the boy flush with embarrassment. She’d thought at first Lord Alain had answered in English to be polite, but now she saw that he merely wanted her to know the reprimand was for her too.
“I beg your pardon, my lord father,” Guerin said. “I will not let it happen again.”
Holy Mary, why was Alain of Hawkswell always so harsh with his son? This was the second time in a matter of hours that she had seen him wound Guerin with few words! She longed to tell him there were more important things between a father and son than mere promptness at meals, but she knew she could not.
Lord Alain indicated a trencher next to his. “As we have no important guests this even, you may sit next to me,” he said. “Now come and be seated, and the meal will begin.” As the children moved toward the end of the dais to reach their places, Lord Alain clapped his hands, and a young lad moved forward with a towel over one arm, carrying a laver of water.
Automatically, Claire began to follow them, until she heard the first titters of laughter. Then a tall, angular man she would later learn was Sir Gautier, the seneschal, stepped forward to intercept her.
“Nursemaids do not sit at the high table, girl,” he said in thickly accented English. His gaunt face was scornful. “Your place is below the salt.” He pointed a bony finger behind her, to where two trestle tables stretched out at right angles to the dais.
He was right, of course. Her chagrin was so great she wanted to run from the great hall. She was miserably aware of the low hum of amusement as she reversed her direction and headed away from the dais. She knew very well a humble nursemaid did not presume to sit above the salt with the lord and his family, but for that one vital moment she had forgotten her role, and the habit of a lifetime had directed her footsteps toward the high table. As the daughter of the lord of Coverly, she had sat at the high table as soon as she was old enough not to disgrace the Coverly name—except when her father had been entertaining many important guests.
But how could she have made such a stupid mistake when it was vital that she convince everyone at Hawkswell Castle that she was what she appeared to be? She must never allow her concentration to slip again, not even for an instant!
Claire found the last vacant seat at the far end of one of the lower tables. She would be sharing a trencher with a man she recognized as one of the soldiers who had been riding with Lord Alain when she had first encountered him this morning.
“Thought ye were to sit at table with the lord, did ye?” he asked in passable English, grinning, as it became clear she would have to sit there.
“I didn’t know no better—I’ve never served in a castle afore,” she snapped. “There’s no need t’ make sport o’ me!”
He raised a brow. “Rather haughty for a nursemaid, aren’t you, my fair one?”
Quickly reproving herself for answering the grinning fool as he deserved, rather than as a runaway English serf woman would, she ducked her head in apparent humility. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m just ‘shamed of my mistake, ’tis all. Ye don’t mind if I share yer trencher, do ye, sir?”
Her fawning apology apparently convinced the soldier to forgive her, for his grin reappeared and he patted the place next to him.
“Sit down, and welcome, my fair one,” he said magnanimously. “I’m no sir, not being knighted and all. Just plain Hugh le Gros, they call me—that means Hugh the Large,” he explained, winking at her. “’Tis to distinguish me from Hugh la Jaune-Tête, Hugh the Yellowhead,” he added, pointing to another soldier seated halfway down the table, who had a thick thatch of tow-colored hair. “He’s the captain-at-arms. Here, let me give you some coney stew,” he said, grabbing a serving ladle nearby and dipping it into a large bowl within reach of his massive, hairy arms. “’Tis not as fine as the venison they’ll be having at the lord’s table, where ye wanted to go, but I reckon ’tis well enough.”
Claire thought about upending her wooden bowl, now full of the stew, on this grinning lout’s head for reminding her of her humiliating mistake, but controlled herself. She was going to have to grow a thicker skin, she decided. She said, “Thank ye, Hugh. And I am Haesel.”
“Where did ye come from, Haesel?” he asked. As she hesitated, wondering what was safe to tell him, he winked at her. “Confess, my fair one—I hear the lilt of the marches in your speech. Did you live near Shrewsbury?”
If he didn’t stop calling her his fair one, she would pour her bowl of stew on his head, and damn the consequences. Did he fancy himself an authority on accents, as well as irresistible to women? His guess on her origins couldn’t be farther wrong! But it little mattered where this Norman idiot thought she was from, so she let him think he was right.
Pretending to be absorbed in the food, which was humble but hunger-satisfying fare, she avoided further conversation for a while. Every so often she glanced up at the high table to check on the children, but apparently Ivy had taught them well, for they ate quietly and with good manners, wiping their faces on folded squares of linen and sharing their goblet fairly.
Then her eyes strayed to their father, but he seemed determined to remain in deep conversation with the the chaplain on his right. Never once did he look in her direction.
Saints, he was a handsome man, especially now that he had apparently bathed. His hair, that shade of brown so dark it usually looked black, gleamed in the candlelight, which also highlighted the stark, well-chiseled planes of his face. It was a warrior’s face, strong and proud, with nothing coarse about it. How could Julia have dismissed this man as merely swarthy?
“A handsome man, the lord, you’re thinking?” said the buxom, florid-faced woman on her left, giving her a playful jab in the ribs. “I’m Annis, the laundress, by the by,” she added with a friendly grin.
Startled at the familiarity, Claire smiled weakly. “I’m Haesel.” Claire supposed she should be grateful that someone at this table full of servants was speaking to her, besides the obnoxious Hugh, but she found herself blushing at the thought that the woman had caught her staring at Lord Alain. “Yes, I guess ye could say the lord be handsome enough,” Claire said, shrugging as if she couldn’t be less interested, “but I wasn’t staring at the lord. I was looking at the priest,” she lied. “I…I thought he looked like someone I knew, ’tis all…”
“Ye don’t say! Father Gregory hasn’t been the castle’s priest but a fortnight or so, after Father Peter’s sudden dying, so perhaps ye did.”
Father Gregory was a comfortable, rotund man of middle height and age, with a ready, benign smile that he had trained right now at the lord.
“It’s just as well ye didn’t have any ideas about the lord, though. He’s a cold fish, is Lord Alain,” said Annis consideringly, chewing on a crust of coarse dark bread. “Has been ever since that flighty wife of his died of lung fever, God rest her useless soul.” Annis crossed herself but rolled her eyes at the same time.
Claire was still struggling not to give the laundress a sharp retort for her disparagement of poor dead Julia when the woman went on. “He’s not completely unnatural, though. When his lust moves him, he visits my sister, Gylda, in the village, so you see what I mean that it’s no use hopin’ that ye’ll warm his bed.”
“Your sister be his leman?” Claire said, conscious of a sinking feeling within her, and wondering why. It mattered not to her whose bed he warmed!
“That makes it sound more regular than ’tis, but I suppose if any woman is, ’tis Gylda,” Annis said consideringly. “He doesn’t visit near often enough to suit Gylda, though,” she added with an earthy chuckle. “She’s a hotblooded one, but then she’s younger than me, o’ course. Nay, he don’t go there but once a fortnight at most, she says, but when he does get randy, Gylda says he is a good lover…” She winked.
“Well, I wish yer sister joy of ‘im,” Claire said, injecting as much vehemence into her tone as she could. “I got no use for fine lords, myself. Pining for such as him’d be like pining for the moon. I know my place, I do. I’ll just take care of his children and eat his bread, and that’s enough for me!”
“That’s a wise girl,” Annis approved, “but ye’re young, ye know. Don’t be too quick to give all men the cold shoulder. It gets cold when the winter winds whip around these stone walls—ye might be glad of a lusty man whose bed ye can steal away to when yer charges be asleep,” Annis counseled.
Hugh had apparently become tired of being neglected while Claire was talking to the laundress, for as soon as their conversation lagged he touched her hand. “Would ye like some of that cheese?” Not waiting for her answer, he cut off a hunk with the same grease-smeared knife he had used to bring chunks of coney to his thick lips.
Trying not to gag, Claire managed to thank him, and pretended to chew it appreciatively.
“Ah, a hungry little pigeon ye be,” he commented as she took the cheese he’d cut for her with his knife. “Mayhap ye have other hungers too, my fair one? Hungers we could satisfy later, say, with a stroll into the barn? I promise you, I am not called Hugh the Large for nothing,” he whispered, then nuzzled her neck with lips wet with wine while simultaneously placing his hand on her knee.
She recoiled and pushed his hand away. “I’ll not go anywhere with the likes of ye,” she said coldly. “I’ll be busy with the children. And I’ll thank ye not to treat me like a slut, Hugh le Gros.”
Hugh was all loud indignation. “Don’t she put on airs, and her naught but a runaway serf? There’s plenty o’ women who’d be glad of my favors, I’ll have ye know!”
Claire shrank down, aware that everyone at their table was watching the little byplay.
“That’s telling him, Haesel,” Annis said approvingly. “Hugh fancies himself quite the lover, but ye can just ignore him. Stop bothering the girl, Hugh! Can’t ye see she don’t like ye? Now you’ve done it, ye Norman bag o’ wind! The lord be starin’!”
Claire was helpless to prevent herself from looking up at the dais. Sure enough, Lord Alain, who had not spared a glance for the servants’ tables throughout the entire meal, was now looking directly at her. Their gazes locked.
His face was an unreadable mask. What was he thinking? Had he seen his man-at-arms pawing her? More important, had he seen her push Hugh away, or had his attention only been attracted when Hugh raised his voice? Would he think she was a boisterous, troublemaking trollop, unfit to care for his children?
Impaled by those inscrutable dark eyes, she was unable to look away as the sweet wafers were brought in, signaling the last course of the meal. Thanks be to Jésu, she’d soon be able to escape the hall with her charges.
All at once Lord Alain arose, ignoring the wafers that his squire was proffering first to him, and stepped down off the dais. He was heading straight for her!
Hugh became suddenly intent on the wine goblet they had shared.
Holy Mary, was he coming to rebuke her personally? Worse, was she about to be snatched up by the neck of her coarse kirtle and thrown bodily out of Hawkswell Castle? Claire prayed to become suddenly invisible—anything to escape his wrath! But he strode closer and closer, his eyes still upon her. Her heart had begun to thump like a drum.
Claire closed her eyes and waited for the cold lash of his voice. Would he believe her when she protested that she had only been trying to avoid the lecherous Hugh’s advances?
A slight breeze caressed her flaming face, and, opening her eyes, she saw that Lord Alain had swept right on past her without so much as a word.
She was sick with relief.
“Did ye see my lord’s face, Haesel? Like a storm cloud, it was! Hugh, ye fool, I thought he were going t’ snatch ye up and throw ye into the moat—didn’t ye, Haesel?” Annis said with a hearty chuckle, jabbing Claire in the ribs again.
“I—I didn’t know,” Claire managed. “I don’t know the man yet. I thought ’twas me he was angry at.”
“Le Gros, I think it’s time you left the hall—alone.”
None of them had noticed the other man’s approach, but now Haesel looked up to see Lord Alain’s squire, Verel, standing behind Hugh.
“What do I care what ye think, ye young pup? Go dry yerself off behind the ears,” Le Gros said with a rude guffaw, but his eyes narrowed dangerously and his hand balled up in a fist.
“Come now, Le Gros, you don’t want to get yourself banned from the hall by swinging at me, do you?” Verel asked reasonably. “Just take yourself off, and bother this woman no more. I’m sure there’s at least one other female within these walls that likes your sort of man.”
Le Gros continued to glare at the young squire for an endless moment, but when the seneschal drew nearer, Le Gros looked away and lurched unsteadily to his feet.
“Meddling young pup!” grumbled Hugh, the wine he’d consumed nearly causing him to fall against Claire as he got up from the bench. “Ye’re makin’ a pother about naught.”
“Ye’ll think it’s naught if my lord turns ye out of the castle for your roistering ways!” Annis hurled the words at him. “I know very well ye’ve been warned about yer manners at table—aye, and yer lechery too—before. Now ye’ll just leave Haesel alone, Hugh le Gros, or ye’ll answer to me as well as Verel. Do ye hear me, ye fat Norman popinjay?”
His mumbled answer, as he staggered off, was a series of Norman-French obscenities that Claire remembered just in time she wasn’t supposed to understand.
“He’ll leave ye alone now, I trow. I fancy he be afraid o’ me,” Annis boasted with a smirk.
Claire saw the squire’s mouth turn up in amusement.
“Thank ye,” Claire said, “thank ye both. I—I’m grateful.”
“You’re very welcome,” Verel said, bowing, then smiling at her. “Actually you’ve done me a service. ’Tis not good for a squire to go a day without a chivalrous deed.”
“And this was yer chivalrous deed?” Claire asked, smiling back. She liked the young squire. He was as sunny and amiable as Lord Alain was suspicious.
Just then she saw the children jump down from the dais and run to her, sweet wafers in hand.
“We’ve done eating, Haesel, have you?” Peronelle asked. “It’s not quite dark yet—please, let’s go into the bailey garden and play hoodman blind for a little while!” she begged. Guerin seconded his sister’s pleas. Nothing in their eager faces gave any indication they had even been aware of the moments of tension that had just passed.
“Will yer lord father mind?”
“Oh, no, Haesel!” Guerin said. “Ivy always lets us—let us—” he corrected himself soberly, “play outside after supper in summer if the weather was fine.”
Lord Alain strode out of the northwest bartizan, one of two turrets that projected out over the inner curtain wall on either side of the main gatehouse, and onto the catwalk, leaving behind a sullen Hugh le Gros. He narrowed his eyes against the setting sun as he leaned on a merlon to gaze out at the deepening shadows spreading over the wood beyond the south wall, conscious of an irritability that would rob him of sleep if he did not rid himself of it.
He had already been angry at himself for the number of stolen glances he’d taken in the direction of the table to which Haesel had gone. By the rood, the woman was naught but a serf, and yet he could not avoid looking at her, as if he were some moon-mazed peasant! He was careful to look, of course, only when he could be sure she would not notice his eyes upon her. It would not do to give the girl jumped-up ideas about herself.
He had become furious with himself, however, for noticing that the burly Norman man-at-arms had been attempting to woo the new nursemaid throughout supper, let alone for caring enough to come to the guard tower to deliver a stern warning to Hugh that he was to leave Haesel strictly alone. Saints, what was it to him?
It was not as if he wanted the girl to warm his bed! Gylda took care of his needs very skillfully when it suited him. And since he more often went to her modest but comfortable wattle-and-daub cottage at the base of the castle’s outer curtain, rather than summoning her to his own bed, he had the added advantage of being able to leave when he wanted to. He suspected the auburn-haired Gylda was just as content with the arrangement; it left her more free to take other lovers when her lord was occupied elsewhere, a possibility that had never bothered him in the least.
Peste! He had no need to covet the girl’s body, so why was he feeling so prickly after watching Hugh flirting with, then trying to fondle Haesel?
It was useless to tell himself that he cared only that a female within his walls be safe from any male attentions she did not want, or that his children be cared for by a woman who was not being distracted by a lecher’s flattery, for even he had recognized the spark of rage that had threatened to grow to a flame as he watched the soldier drooling on her neck. He had wanted to jump over the high table and drag Hugh out of the great hall by the collar of his jerkin, and beat him to a senseless mass of bruises in the bailey!
Just then he heard the sound of children’s laughter in the bailey behind him, and, turning away from the orange ball of the sun sinking below the tree line, he peered out into the open area that surrounded the keep from behind the concealing battlement.
Below, Peronelle and Guerin were turning a blindfolded Haesel round and round. As he watched, they released her, shrieking with laughter as the English girl reeled about like a drunken alewife, her slender arms outstretched in an effort to catch them as they circled her. He could hear her calling out dire threats of what she would do if she caught them, which only made them giggle all the more.
At last, however, his daughter ventured too close to the seeking hands and she was seized by the sleeve of her kirtle and reeled in, screeching protests, into Haesel’s arms, where Peronelle was very thoroughly tickled.
He felt a grin replacing the tightness of his face. Perry certainly appeared to be enjoying herself. In a moment, before the tickles could become bothersome, they turned into a hug. Then Haesel bent and kissed his daughter’s dark head.
He felt his heart warm at the affectionate gesture, which seemed to come as naturally to Haesel as breathing. As Alain continued to watch, he became aware of Guerin standing on the periphery of the hug, looking wistful, envying his sibling the embrace but not wanting to act less than manly by asking for it. Just then it seemed as if Haesel became aware of Guerin too, for she raised her head from Peronelle’s and beckoned with her hand.
Lord Alain watched, enchanted, as both children were enveloped in the English girl’s embrace.
Chapter Five (#ulink_b492e431-9e55-594b-97c4-6842b616c811)
Unused to sleeping on a lumpy, straw-filled pallet, Claire lay awake long after the children’s soft, regular breathing told her they slept. She lay between Guerin’s bed and the truckle bed on which Peronelle slumbered.
Ah, well, a humble English nursemaid couldn’t very well expect a soft feather bed on a rope frame, fine linen and a coverlet of soft furs, could she? If she were really Haesel, bedding like this would have been her lifelong lot, not just during the short interval she would be residing in Hawkswell Castle! Since Ivy had used this pallet before she died, Claire hoped she had been a clean woman and had not left it infested with lice.
After dismissing that thought with a shudder, however, she was just about to fall asleep when all at once she remembered Ivo and Jean. She had been so immersed in settling in that she had forgotten all about the two men who had been taken prisoner! She sat bolt upright in the darkness. Had they been tortured to discover why they had been near the castle? Lord Alain had said they were to put in “that locked room below the cellar.” Were they lying right this moment in some cold, dank cell beneath the ground, their bodies broken and racked with agony? It was common to torture prisoners to extract information.
Were they thirsty and hungry? The images that filled Claire’s mind made her feel guilty for the relative comfort she enjoyed. Although the pallet she lay upon was lumpy and far from what she was used to, she was safe and warm and her belly was full. Ivo and Jean, like the rest of the rough men who had escorted her here, had treated her with little more than a grudging, sullen respect, but on the morrow she would have to find the two and see how they fared.
Then in the darkness a worse thought came to her—if they had been tortured, had they told the lord of Hawkswell about her, and her true purpose in the castle, in an effort to stop the torture? Her heart pounded at the thought, then she forced herself to be calm and reflect. Lord Alain did not seem the type of man who would allow a traitor to remain in his midst for five minutes, let alone dine in his hall, play with his children and go to bed between them. Either Ivo and Jean had not revealed her true purpose—or he had not tortured them yet. She could not imagine men such as Ivo and Jean—two sullen louts Hardouin had recruited from Normandy—being chivalrously silent about their female coconspirator in the face of deliberately inflicted pain.
It was imperative she find them on the morrow and see how they fared! Perhaps if she promised them an extra reward from Hardouin when their mission was done, they would pledge to remain silent about her.
When Claire and the children came into the hall that morning, however, she soon realized she would have to put her plan to find Ivo and Jean temporarily aside.
Many of Hawkswell Castle’s inhabitants were already eating, but as they descended the stone steps from the upper floor, Claire saw that Lord Alain was pacing behind his chair at the high table. As soon as he saw them he strode forward.
“Children, make haste to break your fast,” he said, ignoring Claire. “Ivy’s funeral is to take place as soon as the servants have cleared the hall, so we must go to the chapel to pay our respects before the funeral begins.”
The children stopped stock-still next to Claire. He gestured at the loaf and goblet between their places on the dais, a motion that looked full of impatience. “You had best begin. There is not much time.”
She felt indignant. Not, “Good morning, Guerin and Peronelle, come and break your fast next to me,” before such a serious subject was raised? The unfeeling monster! The children were not even fully awake before he spoke so carelessly! She went and found her own seat, and glared at Lord Alain as he hacked off a piece of bread from the manchet loaf before him with his dagger and began to chew. Did he not even notice that his children were making a mere pretense at breaking their fast, and that their eyes remained downcast in their white faces?
She would have to attend the funeral to lend them support, since it was clear their father would not. Was he such a clod that he did not realize that his children were grieving, that no matter how carefully she had soothed Peronelle’s horror, the little girl was still having difficulty with the idea of putting her beloved nurse’s body in the ground and covering it over with earth?
The children were still only playing with their hunks of bread when Lord Alain arose and beckoned to them. “Come. It is time.”
Guerin stood and manfully followed his father as he stalked out of the hall, but Peronelle’s eyes flew to Claire. She appeared relieved as she saw that her new nurse was getting up too, and she waited until Claire had reached her at the step to the dais. The hand she reached up to Claire was cold as ice.
“Come, poppet, it will be all right,” Claire murmured, standing still a moment while she chafed the small, cold hand. “All will be well, you’ll see.” Impulsively she picked the child up and cradled her against her chest before walking rapidly in Lord Alain’s wake. The little girl buried her face against Claire’s neck.
The sun was just beginning to illuminate the bailey as they crossed its length. It was deserted except for some sleepy-looking chickens scratching in the dirt outside the barn on the far side. They went to the southeast tower, to the right of the inner gatehouse, and climbed a flight of steps.
The chapel of Hawkswell Castle was two stories high. The apse was built into the large window recess; behind the carved wooden rood on the altar was a stained-glass window depicting a sorrowing Virgin Mary praying before her Son on the cross. At the base of the cross a lamb rested, while above the cross a silver-gray dove flew.
A shaft of sunlight sent streams of red, blue and gold color flooding over the still white face of the old nurse on her bier before the altar.
“Look at Ivy, Haesel!” piped Peronelle, whom Claire had just set on her feet at the door to the chapel. “’Tis like a rainbow! Will she look like that in heaven?” The child’s voice echoed in the dim stillness, and Claire sensed rather than saw Lord Alain’s start of surprise as he turned around and realized she had come with the children. He said nothing, just regarded her silently before turning to his daughter. Uncertain as to her welcome, Claire remained in the entranceway.
“’Tis but the morning sun coming through the window,” Lord Alain said, a trifle gruffly, Claire thought. “Come, we will say a prayer for her soul, children,” he added, gesturing to the railing in front of the altar.
“I’ll pray, but she does not need my prayers,” Guerin announced. “Ivy was so good she is already in heaven—I just know she is.”
Claire saw Lord Alain look steadily at his son for a moment. “No doubt you are right, Guerin. But perhaps you should pray that you will be as good as she was, that you may be likewise rewarded,” he said, then he knelt and bowed his head.
Claire tried to pray herself, but she found herself oddly touched by the sight of the mighty lord of Hawkswell kneeling in prayer, and entranced by a ray of sunlight that had found his dark hair and transformed it into a halo of gold. How little he deserved a halo, the hypocrite, she thought darkly, but it became him all the same.
“Father,” Guerin said when Lord Alain lifted his head at last, “did Ivy used to tuck you in bed at night and tell you stories of the saints and Jesus when He was a little boy?”
Claire was startled. She had not realized that Ivy had been the lord’s nurse as well as that of his children. She saw him blink once, twice, and then look down at his stillfolded hands before answering his son. Suddenly Claire realized that Lord Alain had suffered a loss, too, just as his children had. Had his own grief been the reason for his curtness in the hall?
“Yes, though ’twas more often tales of Beowulf she told me,” he said. “I fear I was a bloodthirsty little boy, full of mischief. I must have given poor Ivy much worry.” His eyes had a faraway focus. He arose and went to Ivy’s body, kissing the alabaster cheek, and after a moment’s hesitation, both children did the same.
A short time later, the sound of many footsteps coming up the stone stairs warned them that the funeral was about to begin. Lord Alain said nothing as Peronelle motioned Claire to come up front with her, and she stood there with the children and Lord Alain while Father Gregory conducted the funeral mass.
After the service a number of stout male servants came forward and placed the nurse’s body in a hastily made coffin and carried it out of the chapel. Lord Alain, his children and Claire followed, and the castle folk fell in behind them. They went back out into the bailey and out the gatehouse into the outer ward between the inner and outer curtain walls.
To get to Hawkswell’s cemetery, the procession had to pass through the cluster of a dozen or so wattle-and-daub dwellings that constituted the village of Hawkswell, clustered against the side of the south wall. As they approached them, a woman, whose thick brown hair was barely confined by a crimson riband at her nape, suddenly emerged from one of the dwellings and stood watching the line of people coming toward her. She had a bold, unblinking gaze.
Even before Sir Gautier’s hissed intake of breath, Claire knew instinctively that the woman was Gylda, Lord Alain’s mistress. She saw Lord Alain catch sight of her and give a nod of acknowledgment, and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw the woman fall in toward the rear of the procession.
Claire was annoyed to feel herself bristle at what she saw as the woman’s effrontery. It was of no interest to her if Lord Alain’s whore came to watch the old nurse being buried! Claire, you are here on a mission that will gain you your freedom—nothing else that happens here need matter.
The burial was over, and the children had behaved well, Claire thought proudly. She had worried about how it would affect Peronelle, especially, to see the clods of earth being thrown onto the coffin, but when it was time to do so, Annis came forward and handed each of the children a rose. She bent to whisper in their ears, and then Peronelle and Guerin went forward and tossed the roses into the grave. Their action helped them accept what must come next, Claire thought, for when the earth began to be shoveled in afterward, both of them tensed but did not break down.
It was over. Everyone was walking away from the naked new grave. Claire hoped she and the children could go and find something enjoyable to do, for she longed to banish the shadows of grief from their faces now that the somber ceremony was done. She did not want the children to dwell on their sadness. Later, perhaps, they could go to the flower garden she had glimpsed on the other side of the gatehouse and cut some flowers to decorate the grave, but for now she just wanted them to forget.
But it was not to be.
“There will be some time now while the kitchen folk prepare the midday meal,” Lord Alain informed her in his accented English. “The children are to have their lessons with the priest as usual.”
“But my lord—” she began. Didn’t he realize that his son and daughter needed some happy distraction now, not dull, dry lessons from Father Gregory? Was he blind that be could not see Guerin and Peronelle were bursting with pent-up grief that needed to be released in some enjoyable physical exertion?
“I think it best that they follow their usual routine,” he said, as if he read her thoughts. “You will be free until dinner.”
’Tis not a “usual” day, my lord, she longed to retort, but she dared not argue. Instead she watched as the children walked numbly away with the priest.
Well, now she had the opportunity she had been seeking.
“Be it all right if I look around the castle, my lord?” she asked, taking care to keep her eyes down and her tone subservient. “By Saint Swithin’s knucklebone, I never been in such a vast place, I haven’t. Why, the cot I come from wasn’t nothin’ but one room, and the cow and the pig shared that of a winter, they did.”
A faint look of disgust—or was it boredom?—crossed his lean, high-cheekboned face. “It’s of no concern to me what you do until dinner,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Just don’t distract the men on guard duty in the gatehouses, and don’t pester Guy, the smith. He’ll be shoeing my war-horse in a little while, and it’s bound to make Guy testy.” He turned away and began to follow the others back into the inner ward.
The seneschal came up to him. “My lord, there are matters that require your attention this day,” Sir Gautier said. “The reeve would have a word with you, followed by the bailiff, and there is correspondence from the empress…”
Claire had been about to let Lord Alain get some distance from her, for she had been tacitly dismissed, when the last remark came to her ears, and she quickened her steps to stay just behind him. Correspondence from the empress? She wondered about the contents of such a missive—would it be something of interest to Hardouin? She wished she could see the letter—perhaps the information would be so valuable that Hardouin would be willing to forgo his plot to have her kidnap the children!
“As always, she demands a prompt answer, and that you burn it immediately upon reading its contents,” Sir Gautier went on. Both men seemed totally oblivious to her presence, but of course they spoke in French, and doubtless felt free to converse in front of her.
Claire was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if she would have a chance to read the missive.
“Yes, yes,” Lord Alain muttered with a trace of impatience. “What else?”
“Oh, and the kennel master begs me to inform you that your favorite alaunt bitch has delivered a new litter…”
Lord Alain gave a rueful shrug. “New puppies will have to wait, unfortunately. I’ll see the bailiff and the reeve first, and then attend me in my chambers, and we’ll see what Matilda has to say this time.”
They were in front of the outside staircase that led up to the great hall by them. Claire lingered no more. It was clear that the lord of Hawkswell would have more than enough to occupy him. He would not know that she had gone to check on his prisoners.
Claire waited until Lord Alain and the seneschal had gone into the great hall before entering the doorway right in front of her, praying the locked room would be under the main cellar, and hoping if any saw her, she would appear to be innocently exploring, just as she had asked to do.
Fortunately, when she reached the cellar, by taking the steps down instead of up to the great hall, no one else was there. As her eyes adjusted to the large, shadowy room just below the great hall, Claire made out piles of filled sacks, upright barrels and casks lying on their sides. Her nose was filled with the mingled odors of grain, apples, wine and old leather. There were cobwebs in the high, angled window that let in faint light from outside. There was no door or stairs leading to a room below this one. Was there some other room known as a cellar, perhaps in one of the other towers? But surely not—he had said the cellar.
A preternatural silence made the hair on the back of Claire’s neck stand on end. She moved tentatively across the straw-covered floor, watching where she put her feet, lest she encounter a spider, a creature she had detested ever since childhood. She peered into the dark corners, too, half-expecting a crouching soldier—or some subterranean monster—to leap out and grab her. Apparently the locked room was not in this building, she decided. She would have to look elsewhere. But as she began to retreat from the room, the dust from the straw tickled her nose, and before she could catch herself, she sneezed.
Immediately she heard a faint, muffled exclamation. Had it come from below?
Claire waited, but no further sound came. She would have to risk calling out. “Hello? Is anyone there?” she asked in English.
Then she heard it again, clearer this time, a man’s voice, shouting from below in thickly accented English. “Who’s there?”
“I—” She began, then stopped. Should she call herself Claire, or Haesel? How did she know who was calling to her?
“Who are ye?” She stood absolutely still so she could hear where the sound came from.
“Ivo of Caen! Who’re ye?” came the muffled voice. It seemed to be coming from directly beneath her.
“Ivo! Is anyone with ye?” She dared not reveal herself until she knew if there was a guard within earshot.
“Just Jean.” The voice switched to French. “Is that ye, Lady Claire?”
“Y-yes,” she said, switching to French. “Where are ye?”
“Are ye in the cellar? We’re in a cell right below ye!” came the voice. “Are ye alone? Come down here!”
“But how?” she called back. “I see no door—”
“There’s a trapdoor in the floor. Poke around until ye find it!”
“I will…” Wishing she could have brought a lantern, or even just a candle, she poked her crude leather shoe among the prickly dry straw, until at last her foot collided with something hard that protruded ever so slightly from the floor. She crouched and pushed the straw away with her hands, uncovering a metal ring about four inches in diameter.
“I’ve found it, I think,” she called. “A metal ring?”
“That’s it! Pull up on it, and come down here!” commanded Ivo.
Claire felt an instant flare of irritation at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but she put his impatience down to the effects of confinement. At first the trapdoor didn’t budge when she pulled on it, but after she braced herself and gave it a mighty yank, it yielded with a creak.
Claire peered down into the gaping hole. She could see a stone stairway, but no Ivo or Jean waiting at its foot. There seemed to be a flickering light below, but still she hesitated. Would she be going right into the very cell in which Ivo and Jean were imprisoned? Despite the fact that they were supposedly on the same side, she didn’t trust the rough men, for she’d seen the secret, hungry looks the soldiers had leveled at her during the journey from Coverly—as if they were wolves and she were a helpless lamb traveling in the midst of the pack.
“Does this stairway lead right into your cell?” she called down.
She heard a snort of laughter. “Do ye think Hawkswell would make it so easy to overwhelm the man who brings us our meals and empties our slop bucket? Nay, lady, we’re in a cell at the base of the stairway. Come on down and you’ll see.”
Was it a trick? She’d just have to trust that they were telling the truth, she decided, and lowered her foot onto the first step below.
The walls were cool and damp, but not slimy, she noted, and once she got halfway down she saw that the light was coming from a pitch-soaked torch set in the stone wall right next to a door in which a small, square hole, covered with close-set iron bars, was cut. The hole was just big enough to reveal Ivo’s and Jean’s faces pressed against the bars, watching her descent.
“It’s about time, my lady,” Jean greeted her in his coarse peasant French. “Do ye bring the key to let us out?”
“The key?” She paused on the last step, astonished at his question, but determined not to show her surprise. It was a relief to speak in French again, even to these rough men. “Nay, of course not. I don’t know where the key is kept. I merely came to see if you were both all right. Have you been questioned? Tortured?”
“See, I told you she wouldn’t think to bring no key,” she heard Ivo mutter to Jean. “Yes, we’ve been questioned—by none other than the lord o’ Hawkswell himself. But we didn’t tell him nothing,” the man-at-arms boasted.
“You’ve not been harmed?” Claire persisted, ignoring their surly reception. “You’re all right?”
“Nay, we’re not ‘all right’! We’ve not been tortured, just questioned, but we’re cold and hungry and the food the lord sent down is more like pig swill!” snapped Jean.
“Has he threatened to torture you?” she asked, feeling some lessening of her anxiety as she peered beyond the men and found that while their cell was small, it was furnished with blankets and clean straw.
“Nay, but what of that? Find the key and get us out of here!”
Claire felt a rising exasperation at the men’s truculence. They had not been tortured, at least not yet, and while their surroundings were not luxurious, they were not inhumane. “I’m sorry that you were captured, but I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said Claire, injecting into her voice enough hauteur for a queen. “Even if I had the means to let you out of this dungeon, you might well be captured trying to escape the castle. And then the whole mission is jeopardized, for Lord Alain would have to discover how you escaped, would he not? You would be forced to reveal who released you, and then we would all be thrown into this cell and our mission for King Stephen would not be accomplished.”
Ivo swore and told Claire in graphic terms what the king could do to himself.
She was determined not to let the man bait her, and pretended she had not heard the obscene remark. “I pray you will be patient. Perhaps once he is satisfied that you know nothing, Lord Alain will release you.”
“Yes, and the pope will turn Muslim,” retorted Jean with an ugly laugh.
“If he does not, you will at least have to be patient while I learn my way about the castle,” Claire said. She was sorry she had found them. “I would remind you I have been here less than a day. If it is possible to effect your release without endangering myself, you may trust I will do so. In the meantime, perhaps I can steal a bit of food, so that you can at least have a little something better to eat,” she offered, trying to smile encouragingly at them.
“Well, ain’t that good of ye, my fine lady, dispensing charity to the poor captives?” snarled Ivo. “It’s all yer fault we’re here anyway. We could have found a way to kidnap Lord Alain’s whelps, easy. But no, Hardouin had to use ye!”
How dared they blame her! She hadn’t asked for this task! She opened her mouth to deliver a tart reprimand. “If you hadn’t lingered at an alehouse instead of finding a concealed place to wait for me, you and the rest of them—”
She froze, for suddenly she heard the creak of the flooring above, and the sound of voices.
A torch was thrust down the opening. “Who’s down there?” a familiar voice demanded in French.
Lord Alain! But wasn’t he supposed to be consulting with the reeve and the bailiff, and reading a message from the empress?
“I said, who’s there?” Lord Alain demanded again, this time in English, and she saw his booted feet coming down the stone steps.
There was no help for it. “I—it’s me, Haesel, my lord,” she said, before his head had come below the upper level.
He descended the final steps before speaking to her, and raised the torch.
“What are you doing down here, Haesel?” he demanded, his voice as cold as the stone wall she shrank back against. “Why are you talking to these men?”
Taking refuge in her role as Haesel, the simple Englishwoman, she said, “I—ye said I might explore, my lord, and I was doin’ that…I came into the cellar, and these men called out t’ me, and I just came to talk t’ them, ’tis all, my lord. I—I felt sorry for them, I did, for they said they’re cold and hungry…I’m sorry, my lord, I did not mean to anger ye. I merely wished t’ comfort them in their captivity, like a good Christian.”
His eyes bored a hole through her. His face was a mask of suspicion. “And would your piety allow you to go inside their cell if you could, and warm them with your body, Haesel? I’m sure they’d find that comfort enough! Would you like me to let you in? I regret I would have to lock the door behind you, of course.”
Claire felt her mouth fall open during his tirade, and she didn’t have to feign the tears that sprang into her eyes. “Nay, of course I wouldn’t, my lord! I was just talkin’ to them, my lord! They was lonely!” She allowed herself to sniffle as the tears spilled over her cheek, hoping she could move whatever trace of a heart he had left.
His eyes appraised her for an endless moment. “Very well, I’ll accept what you’re telling me this time,” he said, his eyes still full of distrust. “But don’t let me find you down here again, Haesel. These are low, murdering knaves, and they’d rape you as fast as look at you, then slit your throat, do you understand? They are not fit to be the recipients of your charity,” he concluded sternly, then gestured to the stairs. “Go on, get out of here. I would speak further with these baseborn scoundrels.”
She fled, silently thanking God and all the saints that he had apparently not heard her speaking French.
Alain turned back to his involuntary guests behind the barred window. “Well, have you considered your position during the night? Have you decided to tell me what you were doing in Hawkswell Wood?”
“We told you, we were going to join King Stephen’s forces,” sneered the one called Jean.
“And I told you yesterday I didn’t believe you,” Alain said with a pleasantness that he was far from feeling, especially after finding Haesel down here visiting with them. He wanted to smash the big ugly Norman’s nose into his skull. “None of Stephen’s forces are encamped near here, for I control the valley. Now why were you really here, fellow? Did you hope to infiltrate the castle? Did you think I was so stupid I’d hire any lordless soldier wandering around?”
“Nay, it’s as he said,” asserted the other one, known as Ivo, a rough-looking knave if there ever was one.
“It’s a pity you’re holding to that story,” murmured Alain with a careless shrug of his shoulders.
“Are ye goin’ t’ torture us, then, my lord? We ain’t afraid,” Jean boasted, though he couldn’t quite hide the uneasy look in his squinty eyes.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps we’ll just forget you’re down here,” Alain said with an elaborate show of unconcern. “Imagine it, my fine fellows—no food, no water, no one coming to visit you…the days would turn into weeks. How long would you last, I wonder?”
“Long enough, I’d vow, to see this castle in Stephen’s hands,” came Ivo’s snarling retort.
Was it all just bravado, or was the lout truly less afraid of possible starvation than torture? Perhaps he just felt torture was a more immediate prospect, whereas starvation might take longer—or did he have reason to think Stephen’s forces would somehow be able to take the castle soon, and liberate them?
It was just a rhetorical question in any case, for Alain had never yet stooped to torture, though he was not foolish enough to let these rogues know that fact. Continued incarceration ought to make them willing to talk, given time.
What had Haesel been doing down here? True, she had asked if she might explore, but he had pictured her poking her nose into all the aboveground nooks and crannies within the vast castle and strolling along the wall walk. Taking the trouble to lift the trapdoor was a little more than exploring, he thought.
He could not have explained the urge that had caused him to interrupt the reeve in midspate as that worthy fellow was trying to explain why Lucan the miller should not be expected to do his boon work, in order to check on his prisoners. Alain wished the urge had not caused him to find Haesel here.
Always eager to get rid of the feeling of suffocation that attended his trips down the dark, narrow steps that led to his one-cell dungeon, he turned around. He had started up the stone steps, in fact, when he stopped and turned back to the men in the cell.
“Do you speak English?” he asked suddenly, hoping to catch them off guard. If they denied speaking English, then how had they been able to speak to Haesel?
“Me? Speak that gibberish? N—”
Alain heard a grunt as if Jean had just elbowed Ivo in the ribs.
“That is, yes, just enough to flirt with the serf women, and make a bargain with them what sell their wares, if you catch my meanin’, my lord,” Jean said with a wink.
“Yes, that little blond woman is a hot little piece, my lord,” put in Ivo. “Is she your new leman? I’d watch her—she has a wandering eye, ye know.”
Alain stomped up the stairs before he could give in to the urge to throttle both of them.
Chapter Six (#ulink_14864b7b-ccdc-5d4e-b6e2-ea84e9a39d4e)
Shaken by the near-disaster, her eyes stinging with held-back tears, Claire dropped the trapdoor with a clatter. The arrogant caitiff! How dared he speak so cruelly to her, as if she were so witless that she fully merited the full measure of his contempt! How dared he stare at her with those icy, suspicious eyes? She deeply resented the flash of fear that had gone zinging through her after encountering those eyes. Had he made Julia feel that way?
Why, for just one of those silver pennies she figured were stored in some of those barrels, she’d move a couple of the barrels over the trapdoor—then let him try to get out! She grinned, imagining his rage at being penned down there with the likes of Ivo and Jean for company, until someone missed him! ‘Twould serve him right, though he’d probably bellow so loud he’d make himself heard through the ground before he became hoarse, and they’d find him all too soon. Saints, but he’d be mad as a rabid dog when he was finally freed!
She stopped at the threshold, struck with the realization that if she did just that, he would be powerless to stop her from taking the children. He would not even know. The priest probably taught them their lessons in the chapel or in his own quarters. She must find them, quickly!
But no, it couldn’t possibly succeed, Claire had to admit after a moment’s consideration. She had not been here long enough to have a position of trust. On her first full day at Hawkswell Castle, she could not simply take the children from the priest under some pretext, then walk over the drawbridge and beyond the curtain walls with them! Why, even supposing Father Gregory would allow it, the lowliest soldier would know better than to let her pass unchallenged with them.
She must not let her distaste for planning the kidnapping make her impulsive. Nothing would substitute for careful forethought and learning the layout of the castle and the nature of its inhabitants, so she had best get on with the exploring she had asked to do.
The thought of dampening Lord Alain’s overweening rudeness had cheered her, though, so that she was able to put on a smile before going out into the sunlight of the bailey once more.
The open area within the inner curtain wall was a beehive of activity now that the funeral was over. Men and women were rushing hither and yon, some heavily laden with baskets and bundles. A rhythmic clanging was coming from a rude outbuilding to the right of the great hall, and as she passed by it she saw a man hammering upon a broadsword.
“Good morrow, girl. I am Ewald, the armorer, obviously enough,” he said, nodding at the sword in his hand.
Girl. She was jolted by the simple appellation, being used to being addressed as “my lady,” but it had been said with smiling friendliness. You are not a lady here, Claire.
“Good morrow, Ewald,” she said. “I be Haesel, my lord’s children’s new nursemaid.” She waited warily, on guard lest the armorer find something amiss with her English. But he kept smiling. He was well named, she thought, seeing the muscled shoulders straining beneath the rough russet tunic. Ewald meant “powerful” in English.
“Aye, that I know. I know also that last night ye spurned the attentions of yon coxcomb up there, and I commend ye for it.”
She followed his eyes to the far end of the wall walk, and spied Hugh le Gros pacing there with a pike in his hand.
“Aye,” she said, looking back at Ewald. “But how—?” Had the story spread all through the castle?
“Annis is my wife,” he explained. “I wasn’t at supper last even, but she told me what happened. You have any further trouble with that Norman knave, you come to her or me.”
“Thank you,” she said, warmed by his offer. “’Tis right kind o’ ye.”
“You are well come, Haesel, but perhaps I’d best get back to my work now.”
She bade him good-day and began to move on, then stopped as she saw, at the far end of the bailey, Lord Alain’s horse being held by a nervous-faced groom, while another man on the far side of the horse endeavored to lift the stallion’s off front hoof. That must be Guy, the smith, she thought, and smiled as clear across the bailey she heard him swearing in terse gutter French when the war-horse began to snort and stamp. Yes, the smith sounded just as testy as Lord Alain had predicted.
As she watched, the horse swung his hindquarters around and kicked out viciously, knocking the smith into a pile of fresh manure. His shout of outrage rang out over the bailey. All around him worked ceased as the castle folk stared at Guy Smith’s misfortune.
The poor man! Lord Alain had said to leave him alone, but surely someone should see if more was hurt than his pride, she thought, darting forward across the hard-packed earth—and squarely into the path of a woman who had just come out of a nearby doorway, her shoulders bowed under the weight of two full buckets of ale. Both women went down, splashed with the amber liquid.
“Here, now, why don’t ye watch what you’re about, girl? That brew was bound for garrison and now it’s naught but hog swill!” the woman berated her, as a pair of piglets rushed up to drink the ale in a puddle at Claire’s feet.
Claire was just about to rise and give the peasant woman the dressing-down she deserved when she managed to rein in her temper. Haesel would have no right to do so.
“Well, curse me for a clumsy fool!” she managed, her embarrassment perfectly genuine as she realized that the other woman was equally soaked with the sticky, yeastysmelling liquid. “I’m sorry, but I was tryin’ to go t’ the aid of the smith over there,” she said, pointing to where Guy was struggling to his feet, rubbing his thigh and still cursing at the horse in colorful French.
Heedless of her skirts twisted up around her thighs, the woman propped herself up with her elbows to see what Claire had been talking about. “The old fool’s not hurt, though if the beast bad aimed a little more toward the middle, Guy’s wife wouldn’t have to keep birthin’ his brats every year,” muttered the woman with grim humor.
“Ye must be the brewster’s wife—or daughter?” Claire guessed, thinking the hard-faced, haggard woman was more likely the former than the latter. “How about if I was to go t’ back inside with ye and tell the brewster it was my clumsiness that done it, not any of yer fault?”
The woman laughed mirthlessly. “There ain’t no man t’ say ye’re sorry to. I’m Hertha, and I’m the brewster now that me man’s passed on, though Guy over there says ’tis just till the lord finds a man to replace me.”
“Oh, then I’m sorry twice over,” said Claire, getting to her feet and reaching out a hand to help the woman up. “I’m Haesel, the new nursemaid. Is there no way 1 can make it up to ye, then?”
“I know who ye are—I saw ye with the children,” Hertha said, as though Haesel ought to have saved her breath. “Nay, there’s naught to be done—just be more heedful of where you’re goin’ in future,” the brewmistress said, struggling to her feet without Claire’s assistance.
A prickly soul, Claire thought, as she watching Hertha disappear back into the outbuilding with her nearly empty buckets. She brushed as much dirt as she could off her damp-skirted gray kirtle. Glancing across the bailey again, Claire saw that the groom had regained control of the war-horse, and the smith had resumed his attempts to shoe the restive stallion. She resumed her exploration.
She finished investigating the inner ward first, with its outbuildings built into the inner curtain wall. Crossing the bailey from the brewmistress’s outbuilding, she had come to the kitchen, greeting Marie, the cook who had given her and the children bread yesterday, and had met Tansy and Flora, the pair of kitchen maids, and Peter the quistron, the boy who turned the spit.
At a right angle to the kitchen lay a large rectangular outbuilding easily identifiable as the stable by its odors of manure, livestock and hay. From within Claire heard a horse neigh, and then saw Lord Alain’s stallion prick up his ears, toss his head and give an answering whinny.
“Good morrow, sweeting, and welcome!” called a voice above her. She looked up to see a flaxen-headed man waving from a window in the upper floor of the stable. “Hugh la Jaune-Tête is my name! We’re both named Hugh, but if ye fancy a man who can woo ye better than Le Gros, why not come upstairs to the barracks and visit with me now? There’s naught here but me at present…It’s but a short climb up the ladder in the stable, sweetheart!”
Saints, did every soul in Hawkswell Castle know that Le Gros had tried and failed with her last evening? And as Haesel, she could not respond with the shocked outrage that she could have if a man-at-arms had taken such verbal liberties with Lady Claire de Coverly. Why, he could have been whipped for less at Coverly!
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