The Valcourt Heiress

  Garron stared at her, disbelieving the mad words that had come out of her mouth. Whose mother are you talking about? Why are you defending her? Your damned witch mother doesn’t care about anyone’s happiness, you know that. Don’t you remember how you had to run away when she first brought Jason of Brennan to Valcourt?

  Had her mother fed her a drug that had somehow rearranged her memory? Was there such a thing?

  One of the king’s elegant brows went up. “Rescue you? Your mother rescued you only to force you to wed with Jason of Brennan, the man who tried to destroy Wareham for these silver coins I never heard of until recently, a portion of which rightfully belong to me—the Crown.” He sat forward, sudden greed lighting his Plantagenet blue eyes.

  “Never fear, sire, if the silver coins do exist, if we ever find them, you will receive your fair portion,” Garron told him.

  Edward nodded for Merry to continue. “You said your mother believed she was rescuing you?”

  Merry nodded. “Sire, my mother believed Jason to be the better husband for me until I finally convinced her how very fine Garron was, and at last she believed me.”

  “Did you make her a list of all my good qualities, Merry?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “A list? Why would I make a list, my lord?”

  He cocked his head at her in turn. “It is what you do. Always.”

  “Ah. All your good qualities are imprinted on my brain, each and every one in splendid detail.”

  “Did you tell her I was valiant?”

  “I do not believe so. Don’t you believe ‘valiant’ is a rather foolish word?”

  “Not at all,” the queen said comfortably. “All know my lord is the most valiant ruler in all of Christendom.”

  The king turned in his beautiful chair to say to Burnell, “Do you agree, Robbie? Am I valiant?”

  Burnell was staring at the fast-disappearing stuffed figs. “If you will allow your miserable servant to avail himself of a single stuffed fig, sire, I will announce to the pope that no one can exceed your majesty in every excellent quality that exists.”

  “Do you even remember the particular quality we were speaking about, Robbie?”

  “I will, sire, very soon now.” The king laughed and motioned the servant to offer the silver plate to his chancellor. Garron believed Burnell would swoon. His eyes drifted closed as he slowly chewed. “Aye, sire, I remember. Not only are you the most valiant, you are also the most generous of lords.”

  The queen laughed and began stroking Merry’s hair again.

  The king looked complacent.

  The queen continued, “Do you know, Garron, that Merry already knew how to make lists when she came to me? I but refined her skills. She left my service a master.”

  “Aye, I did indeed.” Suddenly Merry jumped to her feet. She lightly touched her fingertips to the queen’s shoulder. “I thank you, my lady. I believe I wish to have my betrothed stroke my hair now.” She turned to the king. Once again, she gave him a look to burn a man’s feet. The king, unruffled this time, said easily, “You are tired. Go rest, but do not lie beside your betrothed else you won’t be a maid at your wedding.”

  The queen laughed. “Aye, that is the truth, but a good head rub is a very nice end to the wild adventure you two have enjoyed. Go.”

  “Your wedding,” Burnell said, and took another fig. “What do you wish to do?”

  “Why not today?” Garron asked, and thankfully the king agreed.

  However, an hour before the wedding, the queen’s babe, Blanche, fell ill, and so the wedding was postponed until the morrow.

  43

  Garron walked beside Merry on the ramparts, London sprawling in front of them all the way to the Thames. They were thankfully too far away for the breeze to waft back foul smells to them.

  It was a fine afternoon, Garron observed, even though they weren’t to be married, and the air was crisp, a soft breeze blowing. Merry leaned back against the stone rampart wall. Garron said, “You have not worn your hair loose before.”

  She paused a moment, then smiled. “You do not like it thus?”

  “Aye, I like it.” He reached out his hand and took a tress, rubbed it against his fingers and palm. “I also like the various little braids you wear hidden in amongst your braids.”

  “You never rubbed my head, Garron.”

  “I don’t think it such a good idea else I’d doubtless prove the king right, you’d be beneath me in a flash. I’m trying to be strong and honorable, Merry. I will rub your head tomorrow night.” He cupped her cheek in his palm. “I have always liked you, Merry, even when I wanted to clout you. I admired you when I realized what you could accomplish. I even told Burnell that you were smart, which, naturally, he didn’t believe for a moment. I know you will make me a fine wife, an excellent mistress for both Wareham and Valcourt.” He paused a moment, looked out over London. “I was so afraid when you were taken, I believed I would choke on it. I would have faced the Devil himself to get you back safely. But the truth is, when at last I rode from your mother’s tower, I didn’t believe I would ever see you again. I thought she’d taken you away forever.” He paused, watched the breeze lift a stray tress of hair from her forehead. “I have come to realize that I do not wish to be separated from you. I wish you by my side until I die. I wish us to build a dynasty together.”

  She stared up at him. “Are you saying you love me, my lord?”

  He paused, frowned a bit. “I have always believed love is a word the minstrels use to beguile the ladies who listen to their songs. Let caring be enough, Merry, and I care for you a great deal, more than just an hour ago, in fact. Is that enough for you?”

  “I have no need of a word that has no meaning to you, my lord. I’ve always loved my mother, rather I’m sure that I would have loved her had she not left me, yet it isn’t at all what I feel for you. I suppose I care a great deal for you also.” She began to stroke her fingers over his cheek, lightly rubbing. He felt a bolt of alarm. He grabbed her wrist and drew her hand down. “She did that, she stroked my face.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother. I believe now she was rubbing a drug into my flesh.”

  “My lord, you must listen. If she did indeed drug you, it was only because she wished to protect me. She didn’t know you. I think she must have feared you. I hadn’t yet convinced her that you were my perfect mate, that we should be wedded.”

  He shook his head. “She did not fear me, Merry. You said when you awoke from the drug one of the men gave you, you were in a room and she was there with you.”

  “Aye, she was.”

  “Tell me about the room.”

  She cocked her head at him, sending her hair tumbling, but she didn’t give him the sloe-eyed look she’d given the king, a good thing since he would have laid her out on the ramparts walkway. “It was a workroom. I believe she spent much of her time there, reading, studying, conducting experiments, writing her results. I remember seeing stacks of bound parchments, many of them hers.”

  “Was there a carpet on the floor?”

  She looked down at the distant maze of dark streets and the huddled houses. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry, Garron. I suppose the drug was still acting on my brain.”

  “Did she tell you where you were?”

  She shook her head. “I believed I was in Meizerling Abbey, but since it only took three hours to return me to London, I could not have been there. They left me in front of the great gates just below us.” Garron looked down to see Whalen surrounded by at least three dozen men, all of them leaning in, listening to him closely. He rather hoped Whalen would remain as captain of the king’s guard, a possibility only because Merry had been returned, unharmed.

  It sounded to Garron like she had been in her mother’s tower in the forest, and that scared him to his boots. He leaned back against the ramparts. “Merry, I do not understand you. Your mother tried to sell you to Jason of Brennan in return for him giving her Arthur’s silver coins.
r />   “Why are you defending her, both to the king and to me? Whatever her reason for sending you back here, trust me, it had nothing to do with making you happy. If she said otherwise, she was lying.”

  “I will admit, at first, I was frightened of her, and very angry at what she’d done, but then she explained herself to me.”

  “What did she possibly say to change your mind toward her?”

  “I asked her about Wareham and the Black Demon. She denied knowing anything about it. She told me Jason had offered her a lot of silver to marry me. She needed the silver, she told me, and she believed Jason to be a fine man. Why should I not believe her? She is my mother, Garron, my mother.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “She said my father had kept me from her, that she missed me every moment of every day, that she’d heard my father was going to give me over to an old man and so she selected Jason of Brennan. She was very distraught when I told her what Jason had done to Wareham.”

  Garron could only marvel. His bright, very smart girl, and yet she believed these obvious lies? How had the bitch convinced her? He eyed her, then decided to let it go for the moment. He’d believed only a short time before that she was gone forever from him, yet she was here now, standing in front of him. That was enough. He lightly touched his fingertips to her cheek. “When Gilpin shouted to me, I looked up to see you running to me.”

  She gave him a huge smile that made him forget her mother, Arthur’s silver, his own name. Garron leaned forward, cupped her face in his hands, and lightly kissed her. He gave her no time to respond to him, merely pulled her tightly against him and buried his face in her hair. She wrapped her arms around his back and held on. After a moment, he raised his head. “Your hair smells different.”

  “Different?”

  He gathered handfuls of her hair in his hands, and breathed in the scent. “Aye, I do not know the names of different scents, but the smell is different.”

  “You believe my mother washed my hair?”

  “You have no memory of such a thing?”

  “No. I was asleep and then I was awake, lying on a narrow bed in this workroom. I remember the room was warm. Did she really bathe me? Wash my hair? I don’t know, Garron, but if my hair smells different to you then mayhap she did, or someone did. How did my hair smell before?”

  “Like wild sweet smells that lurk deep in the forest. I wanted to bury my face in your hair—in the thick plaits, with the small braids hidden amongst them. I always enjoyed looking for them. You no longer have them either.”

  She chewed on her lower lip, something he’d never seen her do before. She came up onto her tiptoes, kissed him.

  “I never realized how very beautiful my mother is, how she looks like an older sister. Always, I—”

  “Always you what?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you saw her only a month ago, Merry, when she arrived at Valcourt after the death of your father. She came with Jason of Brennan in tow, did she not? For him to wed you? Did you not notice then how beautiful she was, how young she looked?”

  She looked confused, rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “Aye, I remember now.”

  “Do you know, I thought her beautiful until I saw to the rot beneath, until I was faced with the evil in her.”

  He saw her face redden, knew she wanted to argue, and quickly raised his hand. “She asked me if I did not see the resemblance between you. I said no. I still do not.” He paused a moment. “Somehow, I know to my gut she isn’t young and beautiful. I must believe she simply made me see what she wished me to see. You as well, Merry.

  “I’m beginning to think so much of what I have always believed to be real, is not. Her tower was lived in, there was even a fire burning in the grate despite there being no air holes. Then, when my men and I came back, the tower was abandoned, the inside as devastated as Wareham. Which is the truth? Is there anything about your mother that is real? Or is all of it a lie? An illusion, a dream she is able to induce?” He frowned into the distance. “I wonder what she is planning now. I wonder if you were ever really there at her tower.”

  To his surprise, she did not gainsay him. She tipped up her chin, smiled. “Perhaps like my mother, I will not age either, my lord. Mayhap when you are a bent old man, I will still look as I do today.”

  But he did not smile back at her, his fear, his confusion too fresh, too painfully clear in his mind. “You have blinded yourself to what she truly is. Surely you realize I cannot let her live. She must pay for what she has done.”

  “I was blind, Garron, but now I see things very clearly. She wants me to be with you. Can you not simply forget her? What has she done?”

  “She sent Jason of Brennan to Wareham to find Arthur’s silver to give her in exchange for your hand in marriage. He did it with her direction, I am convinced of that. If you wish to forgive her for that unpardonable act, I cannot stop you.”

  She said, her voice firm, and he heard anger simmering beneath the surface, “Unlike you, my lord, I do not believe she gave Jason such orders. I do not believe she knew anything about it. She knew only he was going to give her a dowry for me, in silver coins. Where is your proof of her guilt? There is none for she did nothing. Kill him, not her.”

  “Aye, I plan to. I will kill him because he poisoned my brother. I wonder if your mother provided him the poison to murder Arthur. If Arthur were still alive, why then I would still kill Jason of Brennan for what he did to Wareham. She and Jason must have believed the silver would be easy to find, easy to torture one of Arthur’s men to tell them where it was hidden, but she was wrong.

  “She must pay, Merry. Surely you realize the king will demand it.”

  “Do you wish to kill her?”

  Only the truth, he thought. “Aye, I do. She is very dangerous, Merry.” He searched for the right words. “She has blackness in her. I simply do not know as yet how I will destroy her and her blackness, for she has power I do not understand. Your mother will not stop until she has Arthur’s silver. I wonder what she is planning now.”

  “I believe my mother has given up her hopes of acquiring more wealth. I believe she even accepts that there never was any silver at Wareham.”

  “Why would she accept that? Who would tell her that?”

  “I don’t know. I know I told her—”

  “You spoke to her of Arthur’s silver?”

  “I must have.” She rubbed her temples again, looked confused.

  He lightly touched her shoulder. “Do not worry, it will all come back to you.”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t remember why I would speak to her of the silver. Perhaps I didn’t, perhaps it’s all a dream.”

  “A dream?” Had the witch managed to trap them both in dreams?

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

  “She drugged you, made you believe her lies. Aye, I believe she has the skills to do that. I do not wish to hear you defend her again, do you understand me?”

  She was crying, not making a sound, simply letting tears run slowly down her cheeks. He remembered she could cry at will. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to stop it, but she looked suddenly very lost. He brought her against him, rubbed his hands up and down her back, found his fingers threading through her thick hair. “We have our future ahead of us. Your mother has no place in it.” He said no more. Never would he believe the witch had given up her plans for acquiring the silver. She wouldn’t give up unless he managed to kill her.

  But why had she let Merry leave? She hadn’t gotten what she’d wanted, yet she’d given Merry her blessing and sent her back to him. It made no sense, but he knew she’d had a reason, the witch would allow nothing to happen without a reason.

  Garron raised her face, and kissed her once, lightly, then twice more. He grabbed two fistfuls of her hair in his hands and brought it to his nose. “Aye, different. By Saint Glenda’s clacking teeth, I do not wish to wait for you. I want you now, this very moment
, but I cannot, I cannot,” and he pressed his forehead against hers, held her tight until he felt a chill in the afternoon air.

  “It is time,” he said, and descended the ramparts ladder, Merry a step above him. When he heard a shout from Aleric, he froze.

  “Garron!”

  Aleric? No, it isn’t possible, Aleric is guarding Wareham. Oh God, what had happened that had brought Aleric to London? He saw Sir Lyle standing behind him, his men flanking him. He leapt down the remaining six steps to the ground and ran full tilt toward him.

  44

  Garron, we caught him! We caught Jason of Brennan at Wareham! By all that’s holy, we found Arthur’s silver coins! I came to tell you myself.”

  Garron came to a panting halt in front of his master-at-arms. He heard the words, but could not accept them. “What did you say, Aleric?”

  Aleric was grinning like a madman. “We caught Jason of Brennan. He’s locked in Wareham’s granary, awaiting your pleasure.” And Aleric rubbed his big scarred hands together, his pleasure ferocious to behold.

  Garron slammed his fist into Aleric’s arm he was so pleased, so very relieved. “Did the fool come again as the Black Demon with many men and somehow find his way again into Wareham? Is everyone all right? Come, spit it out. What happened?”

  “Nay, Jason of Brennan did not come as the Black Demon with an army,” and Aleric laughed. “Up rides an old tinker with his equally decrepit old wife, leading three mules laden with goods. I spoke to both of them, studied their goods. I saw nothing amiss with them. I knew the mistress needed more goods, and our people were excited, and so I allowed them to enter.”

  “You are telling me Jason of Brennan disguised himself as an old tinker?”

  “Nay, my lord, it is even better than that—he was the old man’s wife. She looked as old as the dirt beneath the ancient oak at the edge of the Clandor Forest, ugly as sin, her hair tangled gray knots. I studied the old man’s ancient face very carefully indeed, but I will admit I did not study the old woman that closely. I mean I looked at her face, but saw nothing untoward, just ancient seams and wrinkles and black teeth. I saw what I was meant to see. Ah, I am a fool.”