This Is All I Ask

“Shall we go to the shore today, my lord?” she asked softly. “I vow the sun will shine sweetly, just for you.”

  Christopher shook his head and pulled away, unsmiling. “I need to train.”

  And with that, he turned and walked back toward the hall.

  Gillian stared after him, unsure what she should do. Christopher had been taken by foul moods before, but she had always been able to tease him from them. Judging by the set of his shoulders, this was more than a simple bout of surliness. She had the feeling even a few bold and saucy remarks wouldn’t cure what ailed him.

  “I’d leave him be,” a voice said from her side.

  Gillian looked up at Colin. “Think you?”

  He nodded. “For the day, perhaps.”

  Gillian chewed on that for a moment or two, then met Colin’s eyes again. “It isn’t anything I’ve done . . .”

  He shook his head. “You know it isn’t.”

  She nodded, but she felt doubt nag at her. Colin walked away, but she didn’t call him back. She was far too busy examining her actions over the past few days. Nay, surely she had done nothing to offend. Christopher had worn a grim expression since the night Robin had talked to him in the tower chamber.

  Gillian sighed. Perhaps it was merely what she had thought from the start: Christopher was grieved over Robin’s invitation. And perhaps Colin’s counsel was the best. She would leave her husband be for the day and pray his foul mood would disappear with the setting of the sun.

  • • •

  SHE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, ALONE. She reached over and touched Christopher’s side of the bed. It was cold. She was fairly certain he’d been there, though, at some time during the night. The warmth of her hands and feet testified to that. Perhaps he had risen early to see to his men.

  She broke her fast with what was left on the table, for she had overslept and missed the fullness of the meal. It took hardly anything to satisfy her, for her stomach seemed to share her anxiety over Christopher’s mood.

  The inner bailey was empty, except for the lone figure standing there, facing the gates. Gillian ran down the steps and hastened to her husband’s side.

  “My lord?”

  He only shook his head, slowly. His expression was very grim.

  “My lord, what troubles you?”

  He only shook his head again, then turned and walked back toward the hall. Gillian watched him go, hating the feeling of helplessness that washed over her. Perhaps Christopher only needed to be comforted. She could offer to merely hold him, or fetch his lute for him, or—

  “It will pass.”

  She looked up to find Colin suddenly standing next to her, much as he had the day before. He looked at the empty doorway Christopher had just passed through, then met her gaze.

  “I think I would leave him be,” he suggested.

  “Again?”

  He nodded. “Aye.”

  “Is there nothing I can do?” she asked.

  Colin shook his head. “Nay, my lady. You cannot aid him.”

  Gillian suspected he spoke the truth. Christopher had his own demons to wrestle with. She could not do battle in his stead.

  “’Tis far worse than usual,” Jason said grimly, coming to a stop on her other side.

  “Aye,” Colin agreed. “Much worse.”

  “Usually he suffers for a day, then ’tis finished,” Jason explained. “I haven’t seen him in this state since they carried him back from Braed—”

  “Jason!” Colin exclaimed.

  Gillian looked from Colin’s blazing eyes to Jason’s suddenly blanched face. Jason looked at her miserably.

  “My lady,” he began, “forgive me . . .”

  “For what?”

  Colin reached around behind her and cuffed Jason smartly on the back of the head.

  “’Twas nothing, my lady,” he said curtly. “The lad was babbling things he didn’t intend.”

  Jason gulped and nodded.

  Gillian turned to face her husband’s squire. “Were you going to tell me of Christopher’s wounding?”

  Jason clamped his lips shut and remained silent.

  “But, you won’t grieve me,” she said, surprised at his reticence. “Is it that you think Christopher should be the one to tell me?”

  Colin cleared his throat pointedly and Jason remained firmly silent.

  Gillian sighed. “Come, Jason, and let us leave Sir Colin to his grumbles. Christopher’s dark mood has become ours, so you may as well tell me more of the details. He certainly hasn’t spoken much of it—”

  “And neither will we,” Colin said, taking her by the arm. “Let us go sit on yon bench and enjoy the sunshine. While it lasts,” he added, casting Jason a black look.

  Gillian opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it after noting the unyielding set to Colin’s jaw. She could see there would be little point in arguing.

  So she let Colin lead her to Christopher’s favorite seat outside and she sat, because he gave her no choice. He stood at the end of the bench and folded his arms over his chest. He stared grimly over the bailey, wearing his unwillingness to talk like a cloak. Gillian looked down at Jason who sat in the dirt next to her feet. His head was bowed and his shoulders slumped.

  She put her hand on his dark hair. What a gentle heart Artane’s youngest child had, to grieve so much for his master. Jason looked up at her, his blue eyes full of tears. His voice cracked when he spoke.

  “I never meant to say anything about—”

  “Jason, by the saints, enough!” Colin thundered. He looked more enraged than Gillian had ever seen him before.

  “Colin,” she said, surprised and very uneasy at his furious expression, “he has said nothing.”

  “He’s said more than he should,” Colin growled.

  “I truly would like to know more of what happened,” she ventured. “Christopher has told me so little. Jason has already told me a bit when I first arrived—”

  “You told her?” Colin exclaimed. “You mindless babe!” He hauled Jason to his feet and began to shake him. “She was never to know it happened at Braedhalle!”

  Gillian blinked.

  “Braedhalle?” she asked.

  Colin froze. He looked at Gillian, his mouth working silently for a moment or two.

  “Ah . . . I mean,” he began, “er . . .”

  “Braedhalle?” she repeated, in a very small voice.

  Misery was etched into every plane and angle of Colin’s face. He and Jason both stared at her, silently, with pity and anguish mingled in their glances.

  By the saints, it had been Braedhalle. The echoes of the word tumbled out into the bailey and then back at her, pelting her with the truth over and over again.

  Braedhalle.

  She couldn’t breathe. By all the blessed saints above, Christopher had been wounded at Braedhalle. On her land.

  She felt the air around her begin to spin. On her dower land. Oh merciful St. Michael, he had been blinded on her land. How could he even bear the sight of her?

  The irony of that struck her like a slap and she started to laugh. He didn’t have to bear the sight of her because he couldn’t see her—because he had been ruined On her land.

  “Now, Gillian,” Colin began.

  How could Christopher touch her without bringing it to mind? How could he hear her name spoken and not think of her dowry and what that bloody dowry had cost him?

  She evaded Colin and fled into the hall. She ran up the steps, down the passageway and up the steps to the tower chamber. Oh, by the saints, why hadn’t someone told her sooner?

  She put her hand on the door and listened intently. No sound came from within. She eased open the door and looked inside.

  Christopher sat against one wall, his sword on the floor next to him, Wolf lying at his feet. Gillian pushed the door fully open. What could she say to him? Forgive me? I knew nothing of it? I love you and I would give my own eyes if it meant you could see again?

  “My lord?” she managed, te
ars streaming down her face.

  Christopher didn’t lift his head. “Leave me, Gill.”

  “Oh, Christopher.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Please,” he whispered. It was the please that undid her. He was no doubt thinking of his blindness—and where he’d lost his sight.

  Her dower estate.

  She turned and fled down the steps. She ran to the chamber she shared with her love, then realized she couldn’t go there.

  It had happened on her land.

  She ran through the great hall, down the steps past Colin and Jason and toward the inner bailey gate. The portcullis was down. She backed up and looked at Captain Ranulf, who stood on the parapet.

  “Open it,” she ordered.

  “Now, milady, it isn’t wise—”

  “Do it!” she shouted. “As Lady of Blackmour, I command you to open this bloody gate!”

  He hesitated.

  “Open it!” she screamed. “Open it, you fool, and let me go!”

  The man looked genuinely startled and at another time she might have laughed at his expression. Perhaps she had turned into a dragoness after all.

  The gate slid upward. One moment Gillian was staring wildly at the metal-clad wooden spikes, then the next she was sobbing and could no longer see them as they rose up into the gatehouse. Why had no one told her?

  The moment the portcullis was raised far enough for her to duck under, she threw herself forward and started to run. Where all the people had come from, she surely didn’t know, but moving forward was almost impossible. She pushed and shoved and fought to get away from the inner bailey, trying to get out of the gatehouse tunnel. She heard Colin and Jason calling her name, but she ignored them.

  Far too soon, she felt Colin take her arm and try to halt her progress, but she put her head down and struggled forward more determinedly.

  “Gillian, cease,” Colin begged.

  Somehow he managed to put himself before her. She pushed against him, but he was as immovable as the flagstones beneath her feet.

  “Let me pass,” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “You’ll not run from this,” Colin said.

  She looked up at him, barely able to make out his form through her tears.

  “You expect me to stay?” she asked hoarsely.

  “It isn’t your fault,” Colin said, stubbornly.

  “It was on my land!”

  “As if you had anything to do with it! Saints, child, do you not think Christopher knows that?”

  “He doesn’t want me here.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “Nay,” she said, shaking her head violently, “he just asked me to leave. I can’t stay, Colin. I can’t put him through more misery by remaining.”

  “It isn’t you, my lady,” Colin said. He put his arms around her and patted her on the back in a gruff sort of way. “’Tisn’t you, Gillian.”

  Gillian struggled a moment longer, then surrendered. She collapsed against Colin and wept. She cried for what Christopher had lost; then she wept more for the pain she had caused him by just being near him. No matter that she had known nothing of the affair. It was on her land. Surely he couldn’t help but think of that each time he heard her name.

  “My lady? My lady Gillian?”

  Gillian heard Jason, but couldn’t respond.

  “My lady, ’tis my doing. You never should have known. I vow my lord isn’t troubled by it.”

  That was enough to make her look up. “How can you say that?” she cried. “By the saints, Jason, he cannot help but be troubled!”

  Jason shook his head. “’Tis the thought of going to Artane which has distressed him so. My lord Christopher is always thusly after my sire comes.” He reached out hesitantly and patted her shoulder. “He loves my sire, ’tis true, and no doubt wishes he could travel to Artane to see him. I think, though, now he’s thinking how much he wishes he could take you to Artane.” He smiled hesitantly. “Don’t you see?”

  Gillian dragged her sleeve across her eyes. She couldn’t make herself speak.

  “My lady, if he didn’t love you so well, he wouldn’t grieve for what he thinks he cannot give you. Surely you must believe that.”

  “I wish I could,” she said, blinking hard. If only she could stop weeping long enough to see.

  Jason pulled her away from Colin, then took her hand and drew it through the crook of his arm. “Leave him be for the afternoon.”

  “Nay,” Gillian began.

  “Just for a few hours,” Jason insisted. “I vow he will return to his normal self by then. You’ll see, my lady. I daresay he would be powerfully irritated if he found you’d done aught but enjoyed the peace of the garden for the afternoon.”

  Gillian paused. “I think I should just go,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. As distraught as she was by what she’d learned, the thought of being without Christopher was far harder to bear.

  “I think you should stay,” Jason said. He nodded back over his shoulder. “See the merchants who come up the way? You’ll get lost amongst them and then where will we be?”

  “Much better off,” she muttered.

  He smiled gravely. “Ah, but you know that isn’t true, my lady. Come, let us go back to the hall. We’ll find a few trinkets for you, or if you can’t do for yourself, then do for me. A few items of interest to warm the hearts of the maids I will woo in the coming months would be most gratefully received, I assure you.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and turned her around to face the hall. “Come with me, lady.”

  Gillian didn’t pull away. Perhaps she and Christopher truly could come to an understanding in the end.

  She let herself be led away from the gate, only slightly soothed by Jason’s words and Colin’s grumbling. It would take more than those things to ease the ache in her heart and the shame that coursed through her. Nay, it would take far more than that.

  She was almost to the hall when she turned and looked at Jason.

  “Merchants, did you say?”

  “Aye, come to tempt you sorely, no doubt,” he said, with a smile.

  “But it isn’t market day, Jason.”

  She felt Colin stiffen at her side. She spun around. The bailey was full of men who had come in with their carts.

  Carts that flung off their coverings of cloth and foodstuffs to reveal armed men. Gillian heard Colin draw his blade and push her back toward the hall door with one motion. She searched the bailey frantically for some sign of whom the men might belong to.

  Then her eyes fell upon the leader of the ragtag group of men who had come into the inner bailey. It was her father.

  And he was looking at her with murder in his eye.

  “Go inside,” Colin growled, pushing her again.

  Gillian wanted to move, to speak, to cry out a warning, but the sight of her sire standing so boldly in Blackmour’s inner bailey left her rooted to the spot.

  “Jason, take her inside, then fetch your lord.”

  “Nay,” Gillian croaked.

  “Take her inside and fetch Christopher!” Colin snapped. “Do as I say, boy, or you’ll feel the bite of my blade!”

  Gillian felt Jason clutch her by the arm and drag her toward the door. Once she found that her limbs would move, she was surprised at just how quickly they accomplished the task of carrying her into the great hall and up the stairs.

  “Lock yourself in your chamber, my lady,” Jason said, his tone strained. “I’ll come for you when it’s over. I’m off to fetch Lord Christopher.”

  “Nay!” Gillian cried out, but it was too late. Jason had disappeared further into the darkness of the passageway.

  Gillian burst into her chamber and ran for the trunk. She would get to her father first, before Christopher had a chance. Without giving it more thought, she threw up the lid and dug through the clothing for her blade.

  Then the thought that she really should change into something more serviceable than a gown crossed her mind and she hastil
y took her own advice. She made quick work of braiding her hair. It behaved perfectly, something she might have taken pleasure in at another time.

  Now all she could think about was the man she would have to kill.

  She ran from her chamber, tripping over her own feet in her haste and fear. She would have to face her sire, but the thought of it terrified her so that it was as if she had frigid seawater in her veins.

  But, she realized with a start as she fled down the steps, it was no worse than the fear she’d felt before her father beat her.

  She took one last, great gulp of air and leaped down the final steps. She would run through the great hall and out into the bailey. Then she would engage her father before he had time to gather his wits about him. He’d found her naught but a cowering child before; he would find her a far different woman now.

  She threw herself into the great hall, then skidded to a halt.

  She’d expected to find the hall empty.

  It wasn’t. Her father stood in the middle of the floor with his men behind him.

  Christopher stood facing him.

  Gillian felt as if she’d been turned to stone. Her husband faced her father, without his eyes to guide him. Gillian would have cried out a warning, but she found her voice wouldn’t work.

  She had come too late.

  thirty

  CHRISTOPHER STOOD WITH HIS ARMS FOLDED OVER HIS chest, forcing himself to remain calm. By the saints, this was not how he’d planned to pass this morning!

  Yesterday as he’d bid his former master farewell, he’d decided he would spend the day locked in his tower chamber. His mood had been black and it had seemed the safest course of action. No sense in making those around him as miserable as he was himself. He’d been determined to stay there through the night and possibly well into the next day, just to give himself time to work out his rage and frustration with his blade. Robin’s leave-taking always affected him thusly; only this time the pain was greater. He’d wanted to travel to Artane in the past, merely to see Lady Anne and the other sweet souls there. Now, the ache was worsened by wanting to travel back to Artane and take Gillian with him. He longed to show her where he’d passed his youth. It would have also pleased her to see where William had left his marks on Artane’s hall. Aye, the time could have been passed most pleasantly.