TAMARA LEIGH NOVELS - Book One in the Age of Faith series
Chapter 14
“Wife? What do you say, Lady Isobel?”
The woman clasped her pale hands against her black skirts. “What you heard, Lady Annyn.”
“I do not understand. I am your son’s enemy. I tried to—”
“But you did not.”
How did she know that when not even Wulfrith knew she had turned from revenge?
“Thus, you are no longer his enemy.” Lady Isobel crossed to the chest and lifted the lid. “And that”—she turned with a kerchief in hand—“is what we must convince my son.”
Annyn did not know what to say. Regardless that it was Rowan who had sent the arrow through Wulfrith, she was to blame. “I do not understand that you would wish me for a daughter. And even if ’tis so, surely you know it is not possible.”
The lady extended the kerchief. “I am mistaken in believing your heart has turned to my son?”
In that she was not completely wrong, but it was not as the lady believed. It could not be. “You are wrong, my lady.” Annyn accepted the kerchief and dabbed her nose. “As I now know your son could not have murdered my brother, I regret what happened. But ’tis only regret I feel for the terrible wrong done him. Naught else.”
Lady Isobel’s gaze narrowed. “Even if he cared for you?”
She nearly laughed. “Truly, Lady Isobel, after all that has happened, the last thing your son feels for me is care.”
The lady turned on her heel. “We shall see. Come.”
Insides aflutter, Annyn stared after her.
Finding herself alone at the door, Lady Isobel said over her shoulder, “As you surely know, he does not like to be kept waiting.”
As Annyn stepped into the corridor, her gaze clashed with Squire Warren’s where he stood erect outside the second door. His brow furrowed as he stared at her, but a moment later recognition flew across his face. Then disbelief.
Was she so transformed? Could a bath and bliaut effect such?
He recovered, as evidenced by eyes that were no more kind than Squire Samuel’s or Charles’s when she had been brought from the tower.
“My lady,” he greeted Wulfrith’s mother.
“Squire Warren. Wulfrith is alone?”
“Nay, Lady Gaenor and Lady Beatrix yet attend him.”
Gaenor, to whom belonged the bliaut Annyn wore. Something painful sank through Annyn, something Rowan would not like.
“You may announce us,” Lady Isobel said.
Squire Warren turned and knocked.
“Enter!”
Wulfrith’s voice, strong and sure as if he had not suffered these past days, made Annyn’s heart jump. Telling herself it was time to put aside pride and plead for Rowan, she pressed her shoulders back.
Squire Warren pushed the door inward. “My lord, your lady mother calls and brings with her Jame—er, Lady Annyn Bretanne.”
Silence.
Annyn looked to Lady Isobel, but the woman’s eyes were forward. Would Wulfrith not see her?
“Bid them enter.”
A chill coursed Annyn, but it was more than the cold she had yet to fully warm away. Praying she would not shiver when she stood before Wulfrith, hoping Lady Gaenor was not terribly beautiful, Annyn followed Lady Isobel into the solar.
Garr was unprepared for the woman who entered behind his mother, who sought his gaze with those same eyes that had looked through his dreams at him. Though he had kissed her, even acknowledged she was pretty, Annyn Bretanne clothed and presented as a lady made a dry pit of his mouth. And caused his resentment to root deeper.
The transformation to lady was what had delayed her. What was his mother thinking? Here was the one who sought his death, who was responsible for an injury that could lame him for the remainder of his life, and yet she dressed Annyn in finest as if she were not a prisoner.
“She is the one?” Beatrix whispered where she sat to his left. “What ill befell her face?”
Her observation jolted Garr, for he had not noticed the bruise. Though it was more yellow than the purple it had been when last he had looked upon her, it remained distinct. But he had looked past it.
Gaenor shifted beside him, and when he glanced at her he saw she also stared. However, she held her tongue as her sister did not know how to do.
Though Isobel drew alongside the bed, Annyn halted at the center of the room, looked to Garr’s sisters where they sat on either side of him, then gave her stiff gaze to Garr.
Stiff because of his partly bared chest, he realized, remembering how she had avoided looking upon his body when she was disguised as a squire. For that, he nearly drew the coverlet higher. But she ought to be ill at ease.
Gaenor gasped. “She wears my bliaut! That vile creature wears my bliaut!”
It seemed she did not know how to hold her tongue.
“Aye, Daughter,” Lady Isobel said, “it is the same you were to wear to receive Lord Harrod who offers for you. Pity you cannot do so lacking a proper gown, hmm?”
That cooled Gaenor. Still, it was obvious she resented the woman in their midst. And neither was Beatrix pleased, though her pique was tempered by youthful curiosity.
Garr waved to the door where Squire Warren lingered. “Out! All of you!” He narrowed his gaze on Annyn. “Except you.”
Gripping a kerchief, she remained unmoving as Gaenor and Beatrix exited the chamber ahead of their mother.
“Mother!” Garr called.
She looked around.
“We shall speak on this.”
She inclined her head and closed the door.
Silence swelled between Garr and Annyn when their eyes met again.
Finally, she stepped forward. “I would speak to you of Rowan. He—”
“—is to know no mercy, just as he knows no honor.”
She halted at the foot of the bed. “Jonas was as a son to him. All these years he has believed, as I did, that ’twas you who killed him.”
As she had done? No longer did? Telling himself he did not care what she thought, he sat forward, causing the coverlet to fall to his waist. “For the last time”—he winced at the pain that lanced his shoulder—“I say your brother was not killed. Shame was his end.”
“You are wrong. I—” She snatched the kerchief to her mouth, turned her head, and coughed into it.
Was she ill? When she looked back, Garr saw the whites of her eyes were red and her cheeks flushed. And her cough had been nearer a bark.
She wiped her nose. “Upon my word, you are wrong.”
He should not have allowed Abel to hold her in the tower. As his mother had warned, she was a lady. Of course, no lady he had known could have endured what Annyn had at Wulfen.
She came around the bed. “Pray, Lord Wulfrith—”
“I will not argue it.”
“But he is ill.”
And she was not? It bothered that she should care so much for the man, and again he wondered if her relationship with Rowan was one of lost innocence. True, her mouth had seemed untried, but that did not mean the rest of her was.
He drew a breath and caught the scent of roses. Shot with a desire to breathe more deeply of her, he berated himself. “’Tis for yourself you ought to plead.”
She stepped nearer—within reach. “Then you would have him die there?”
“If that is what the Lord wills.”
Anger brightened her eyes. “The Lord did not place him in that...abyss of inhumanity.”
Once more, Garr turned his aching hand around an imaginary sword. “He did not, just as He did not make your Rowan loose an arrow on me!” Lord, why did he allow this conversation?
“That I have already explained. I can say no more on it.”
“Then do not.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Was it truly from you that my brother learned revenge belonged to God? Impossible, for you are without heart, Wulfrith who does not even bear a Christian name—with good reason I am sure.”
Garr knew he should let her retaliation pass, but the first lesson taught him refused to hold with this woman. Arm protesting, he clamped a hand around her wrist, dragged her forward, and slapped her hand to his bared chest. “I have a heart, Annyn Bretanne,” he bit inches from her face, “though your Rowan would have had it be otherwise.”
He heard her sharply indrawn breath, felt its trembling release on his face. In her eyes that he should not be able to read, he saw she remembered the last time they had been so near. As if no ill stood between them, as if her beauty were unsurpassed, as if she were warm and willing to lie down for him, his body stirred to the beat of his heart against her palm.
“Aye”—she slipped a tongue to her lips to moisten them—“but of such a heart one should not boast, Wulfrith.”
Garr released her. “I am done with you, Annyn Bretanne.”
She straightened. “For how long?”
“For however long it pleases me.”
“And then?”
“Then you shall see. Squire Warren!”
The door swung inward and the young man stepped inside.
“The lady is to be allowed the reach of the donjon, and only the donjon. This task I give you and Squire Samuel that you may redeem yourselves. Other than the garderobe, she goes nowhere without attendance.”
Dismay flickered in the squire’s eyes. “’Twill be done, my lord.”
“If she escapes,” Garr continued, “your time at Wulfen and Squire Samuel’s will be done.” He looked to where Annyn stood alongside the bed. “Take your leave and do not trouble my men overly much.”
She smiled tightly. “I would not think to.”
It vexed Garr that it was the same his mother had replied when he had earlier warned her against testing him, especially as she had then done so.
Annyn crossed the solar and stepped into the corridor.
“Be of good care,” Garr warned Warren.
“I assuredly shall, my lord.” He closed the door.
Garr sank back against the pillows and squeezed his shoulder. Had he torn the stitches when he seized Annyn? He looked to the bandages. God willing, there would be no seepage, for if he was to recover before Henry descended upon Stern, he could not waste even a day.
Annyn leaned back against the wall for fear she might crumble before Squire Warren. He would like that, but even if it was his due, she would not yield. She pushed off.
“Come.” He stepped past her.
Where? Of course, did it matter when her audience with Wulfrith had only gained her scorn? Though she, who had set to motion all that transpired, was once more made a lady, Rowan weakened in that horrible cell. And it seemed there was nothing she could do.
“Lady Annyn!”
She met the squire’s impatient gaze.
“Lady Isobel said you are to take the nooning meal with her, and it has begun.”
Though Annyn tried to ease the scratch in her throat by swallowing hard, it did not aid. As she followed the squire to the stairs, she coughed into the kerchief and knew she sounded nearly as bad as Rowan.
The mood of the hall altered with her arrival as all pondered and judged her. Still, she did not falter as Squire Warren guided her to the high table where Lady Isobel was seated with her daughters. And farther down the table sat Sir Merrick who allowed her no more than a brooding glance before looking elsewhere.
What was it about him? What did he know? When might she speak with him?
“Sit beside me, Lady Annyn,” bid the lady of the castle.
Skirting the table, Annyn looked to Gaenor and Beatrix whose eyes bored through her, then lowered to the bench beside Lady Isobel.
The woman leaned near. “Worry not. God shall deal with my son.”
“To what end?”
“Methinks that depends on you.” Wulfrith’s mother dipped her spoon into the steaming trencher, the contents of which would have made Annyn’s mouth moist were she not struck by the realization that the lady might be a valuable ally.
Though Annyn was not allowed to leave the donjon, there was nothing to prevent Lady Isobel from doing so. But how to convince her to aid the one who had nearly killed her son? For whatever reason she had pardoned Annyn—an incredible stretch—surely it would not extend to Rowan. Still, it was his only hope.
Ignoring Gaenor and Beatrix who continued to watch her from the other side of their mother, Annyn scooped stew from the trencher that had appeared before her. For the first time in days, the food she spooned into her mouth was hot, but though it warmed a path to her belly, her guilt that Rowan was not here to savor it bade her to lower her spoon.
“Lady Isobel,” she spoke low, “if I could speak to you about Sir Rowan?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You press my generosity too far.”
Of course she did. “Apologies, my lady.” Annyn rolled the spoon’s handle between thumb and forefinger while the woman continued to glare at her. Finally, Lady Isobel returned to her meal, but Annyn could not.
She coughed into the kerchief. How her throat ached, first from affecting a man’s voice, now from malady. But surely it did not compare to what Rowan suffered in that filthy, dank cell.
Annyn turned again to Lady Isobel. “I am beset with fatigue. If ’twould not offend you, I would seek my rest.”
Concern flitted across the woman’s face, and she looked to Squire Warren. “See Lady Annyn to Wulfrith’s chamber. It shall be hers for the duration of her stay.”
The protest that rose to Annyn’s lips died with the realization it was not the solar of which the woman spoke, but the chamber in which Annyn had bathed.
Once Annyn was clear of the hall, she breathed out relief. However, at the landing she fell beneath Squire Samuel’s regard where he stood outside the solar.
The young man’s becoming face was made unbecoming by the scorn that bent his mouth and made slits of his eyes. “My lady,” he mocked as she drew even.
Annyn halted and let the spark in her light a fire. “I am a lady,” she said with her chin high. “A lady that you, with all your training to become the consummate warrior, were too blind to see. A lady that you allowed to steal past you and compromise your lord’s safety.”
His brow grooved so deeply it nearly made him appear elderly.
“Good eve, Squire Samuel.” Annyn stepped past. “Sleep light.” She met Squire Warren’s livid gaze where he stood a stride ahead. Though her words had not been directed at him, it had fallen as heavily. She did not care. A man might be dying and all the discomfort these two suffered was pricked pride.
As Squire Samuel sputtered at her back, she strode past Wulfrith’s first squire.
“Were you the least bit pretty,” Samuel’s convulsing tongue finally formed words, “you could not have done what you did.
He struck harder than he could know, nearly taking her breath for all these years of knowing she could never measure against her mother’s comeliness. Now, finally, someone had spoken it—worse, for the young man was not even comparing her against her mother’s profound beauty. Not even pretty...
Annyn’s spirit awakened and found good in it. At the door to her chamber, she turned and smiled. “I shall take that as a compliment, Squire Samuel, for if that is all that held this lady from being revealed, it recommends that I, a mere woman, am equal to men as they would not have me believe. Thank you.”
Mouths slackening, the young men stared.
Annyn shouldered into the chamber that wafted blessed heat, closed the door, and crossed to the small table beside the bed. She lifted the hand mirror that lay alongside the basin.
The face reflected back at her was one she had always known, though these past years she was less inclined to look upon it—oval, set with dark eyebrows above pale blue eyes that were a bit too large, a small nose flecked with freckles, and an unremarkable mouth.
Pretty, Lady Isobel had said, but she had only been kind.
Annyn spread her lips. Her teeth were her best feature, white and evenly set. The only real difference to be found since last she had looked upon her reflection was the bruise on her cheek. The swan that Uncle Artur had years ago assured her she would become had yet to materialize, meaning it would not.
As she set the mirror back, a tickle rose in her throat. She coughed, wiped her nose, and eyed the bed. She would rest, and in the morn perhaps she would think more clearly on Rowan.
When she curled beneath the coverlet, the cough turned more insistent and summoned an ache between her eyes. Burying herself deeper beneath the covers, she groaned. Such misery!
“What is this?” Garr frowned at the folded garment tossed into his lap.
As eventide deepened, Isobel perched on the mattress edge. “Do you not recognize the tunic over which your mother toiled though she detests needlework?”
What was she plotting? He lifted the garment and saw it was the one he had given to Annyn. “I know it. Why do you bring it to me?”
“Look to the hem.”
He did. It was torn, and he was momentarily swept with fury at the possibility one of his men had assaulted Annyn. But Abel would not have allowed it.
“What would you have me see, Mother?”
“From that tunic was taken the cloth that bound your shoulder. Lady Annyn herself tore it to stanch your bleeding.”
Annyn who had run with Rowan after the man had put an arrow through him. Garr dropped the garment. “Why do you champion her?”
“When I sought her out in the tower, ’twas with an angry heart, but something...” She shook her head. “She is not as expected.”
“Just as she is not Jame Braose.” He made no attempt to lighten his loathing. “The woman is a deceiver. She will say and most certainly do whatever best serves her.”
Isobel leaned near. “She knows you did not murder her brother, though she has but the evidence of her heart to tell her.”
“Heart!”
Isobel laid a hand over his. “You have been too long without prayer. I bid you, go to it and find comfort. Anger will be torn from your eyes that you may see more clearly.”
He pulled away from her, and when he spoke, his voice was chill. “Does a bed not await you, Mother?”
Disappointment thinning her mouth, she stood. “Do not let all I taught you ere you were stolen from me be for naught, Garr. Now more than ever you need—”
“I know what I need!” He flexed his stiff fingers. “A sword to hand and an arm to swing swift and sure.”
“But going before it must be forgiveness.”
He thrust off the pillows. “You dare speak to me of forgiveness when for how many years did you war with my father? Still you wear black when he is dead and buried and can no more be eaten by your longing for another man.”
Her eyes dulled as if whatever nibble of light was in her had gone out.
“God’s patience,” he growled and dropped back onto the pillows. He was once more the young boy whose father had tested his anger and corrected it time and again. He had hurt his mother, and it was wrong, whether by Drogo’s law or God’s.
“You are right,” Isobel said softly. “Thus, who better to advise you to forgive than one who did not and now lives in deepest regret?”
Garr frowned.
She nodded. “Though the day I wed Drogo I vowed to wear black until death parted us, only when he was gone did I realize the wrong I had done him. For that, my son—not revenge—I continue to wear black to remind me of my unpardonable error.”
It was the most she had ever spoken of her relationship with his father. Though Garr knew it was not for a Wulfrith to care about such things, he hungered to understand what had happened between the two who had conceived him in bitterness.
A knock sounded, causing his mother to startle. “The physician.” She hurried to the door as though she fled the devil himself.
Garr ground his teeth. His injury had waited this long for the man to return from attending an ill villager earlier in the day. It could wait longer. “Mother!”
She pulled the door open and swept past Squire Samuel and the physician.
Tempted as Garr was to vault after her, he knew one could not make a woman talk unless she wished to. And even if one could, it would be wrong to press Isobel further. The little she said had cost her much. If more were to be told, it would have to save for the day of her choosing.
“Your color is better,” the physician said as he approached the bed. “How does your shoulder fare?”
“It does not pain me.”
The man set his bag on the bed. “Let us see if the stitches hold.”
Throughout the examination and redressing of the wound, Garr experienced a restlessness so great he was beseeched a dozen times to be still. A quarter hour later, the physician pronounced that the injury was healing well and withdrew.
Garr looked to the torches and followed their convulsing light that reached to the torn tunic. Was it true Annyn no longer believed him capable of murder? It was as she had alluded when she came to the solar, but perhaps she had said it only to soften him toward Rowan. But if it was true, what then?
He groaned. Mother was right. He was in need of prayer to battle the terrible emotions that threatened to drag him farther and farther from God. He thrust the coverlet back and dropped his feet to the rushes. Though he felt a lightening of the head when he stood, it passed, and he retrieved his robe.
“My lord!” Squire Samuel exclaimed when Garr pulled open the door. “What do you require?”
“Naught.” Garr stepped past him. As the chapel was on the floor above, he started for the stairs, but he had not taken two strides when the sound of coughing reached him. He looked around. Only then did he notice Squire Warren outside the chamber that was Garr’s when he came to Stern.
His mother had put her in his chamber? In the order of things, especially as Annyn was hardly an esteemed guest, it was where Isobel ought to bed for the night.
Garr strode back and halted before Warren who stood with a stiff back and erect chin.
Before Garr could speak, the coughing came again, so raw it struck him with unease. “How long has she been thus?”
The young man shifted his weight. “She was quiet for a time, my lord, but has begun again.”
The tower had done it to her. When she had been brought to the solar this morning, he had seen she was ailing, but it had not seemed as serious as the cough now indicated. “The physician has seen her?”
“I think not, my lord, certainly not since she was given into my charge.”
Garr glared at the young man. There was still much to be taught him before he earned his spurs. He motioned Squire Warren aside and opened the door.
The brazier was well laid, for it still warmed the chamber, its glow lighting the bed and the lump that was its occupant.
The cough came again, sounding ten-fold worse now that the door was no longer a barrier. Of such things men and women died.
“Send for the physician, Squire Warren.” Garr stepped inside and closed the door. As he tread the rushes, the cough subsided. Not until Garr drew alongside the bed did he realize that Annyn was entirely beneath the covers, not a glimpse of dark hair to be seen.
“Annyn?” He strained to catch the rise and fall of her breath, but either there was not enough light to show it, or...
He snatched the covers back and bared the woman who curled in on herself on the same mattress that, in the past, had taken his weight. The thin chemise that damply conformed to her body revealed slim legs, smooth thighs, rounded hips.
Denying the desire that rose in him, Garr bent near, but no nearer did he get.
Annyn coughed so hard she shook, then threw out a hand as if seeking the coverlet.
Lest she open her eyes and construe his presence as concern for her well-being—or an attempt to ravish her—Garr stopped himself from turning the covers over her. Not only was it exceedingly warm in the chamber, but she could retrieve them herself. No sooner did he step back than her lids lifted.
With a cry, she flew up like birds scattered from a thicket, grabbed the coverlet, and dragged it against her chest. “What do you here?” she demanded in a graveled voice.
Garr did not need the light of torches to know her fear. He saw it by the brazier’s glow that lit her wide-eyed countenance—felt it in the space that throbbed between them.
She thought he had come to take revenge in her bed. Though he knew he should not fault her, especially considering his reaction to the sight of her, it rankled that she would think it. Never had he taken a woman by force.
Shoulder aching, he crossed his arms over his chest and supported the injured one with a hand beneath. “I am not here for what you believe.” And yet still he stirred. Could she not also cover her legs? Not only were her delicately arched feet visible, but her stretch of calves...
She clutched the coverlet up to her chin and tucked her legs beneath so the only bare flesh remaining was of her arms—arms that could draw a man in and hold him tight.
“For what did you come?”
Aye, for what? Not concern. Certainly not that.
She coughed, the terrible sound breaking from deep inside her chest. Bending forward, short dark hair falling over her face, she struggled to clear the sickness from her lungs.
When her heaving subsided, Garr was so tense from forcing himself to remain still he felt as if cast of iron.
Annyn tossed her head back and, eyes teared from the strain of coughing, waited for his answer.
“I came for all the noise you make,” he said. “’Tis enough to awaken the dead.”
Indignation flashed across her face, but as brief as lightning in the sky, it cleared. “Though you ought to hate me, I do not think you do, Wulfrith.”
His ire flared. “You err in trying to know me.” He strode across the chamber and slammed the door behind him.
Annyn sighed. Deny it though he did, she felt sure that concern had brought him to her chamber—and desire had held him to it, though, according to Sir Samuel, she was not even pretty. So what was there to tempt Wulfrith? And what had he seen when she lay uncovered?
She pushed a foot out from beneath the coverlet, a calf, a lower thigh. It was a nice enough leg, well-turned, smooth, and proportioned to the rest of her. But as for the rest of her...
She lowered the coverlet and eyed her small chest. Though it was certainly not a boy’s, neither was it anything near the bosom her mother had not passed on to her.
Annyn blew out a breath that ended on a cough, fell back, and stared at the ceiling. Concern Wulfrith felt for her, but his desire was surely of a man too long without a woman. And it made her ache.
A knock sounded.
She whipped the covers back over her and lifted her head as a tall, slim man entered.
“My lady, I am physician to the Wulfriths.”
Annyn nearly smiled. The man who claimed she could not know him had sent her a healer.
Garr straightened from the wall outside Annyn’s chamber and met the man’s tired gaze. “Speak.”
The physician scowled. “The first I shall speak is that you ought to be abed, my lord.”
In prayer was where he ought to be, but from here he would go there. “The Lady Annyn?” He was in no mood to sweeten his demand, especially after his encounter with the woman who claimed to know him.
The physician repositioned his leather bag beneath an arm. “’Tis good you brought her from the tower. Had she remained, she would have...” He shrugged. “’Twould not have boded well.”
To Garr’s right, Squire Warren shifted. In the quarter hour since the physician had entered Annyn’s chamber, he and Squire Samuel had been fed additional lessons that had made their cheeks flush out to their ears.
“The chill has gone to her chest,” the physician continued, “but it ought to resolve provided she rests and takes the medicinals I gave her. Of course, ’twould speed her healing if I bled her—”
“You shall not.” Healers and their leeches! One of the few things Garr remembered of the past four days was when he had awakened to find worms sucking at his flesh. He had raged until they were removed. Despite the certainty of so many, he did not believe there was benefit to leeching, especially when one had lost as much blood as he had done.
The man inclined his head. “As you wish, my lord. Is there anything else you require?”
“Nay. Good eve.”
The physician started to step around him, but paused. “The lady asked that I attend her man who is yet in the tower.”
Far too loudly, Garr said, “Should I further require your services, Physician, I shall tell you.”
“Aye, my lord.”
As his tread receded, Garr silently berated himself for what he must do. But first, prayer.
