Nay, better that he press on with his original plan.
Which he would do, if that damned Marie would respond to his message. He’d said it was urgent. Was she so witless that she couldn’t sense what he was about?
He’d almost decided that perhaps he should go search for her when a page came running into the hall, asked every soul there if he happened to be Sir Etienne, then finally looked about in confusion until Sir Etienne strode over and ripped the missive from the lad’s hands. He gave the boy a goodly shove as a reward, then unfolded the disturbingly small scrap, of parchment.
I’m occupied now. Meet me in the stables after dark.
And that was all. Sir Etienne had a devil of a time making out those words alone, as his skills were certainly not what they likely should have been, but what did he need with reading when he would some day hire a man to do it for him?
He ground his teeth in frustration. Who did the wench think she was, sending him to the stables like a naughty kitchen lad bound for a whipping? He wanted her bed, damn her to hell, not a poor bit of straw. And did she not have more on her mind than his fine form? He had plans! He had schemes!
And he decided, in that instant, that he would say nothing of them to her. He stroked his chin thoughtfully and let that thought build in him until he was fully satisfied with it. Aye, he would keep his knowledge to himself and revel in the fact that he had a secret. And whilst he was about his business with her, he would pry tidbits from her. No doubt she’d seen the inside of Solonge’s treasury and would happily list items and amounts for him.
And when he was finished with her, he would toss her aside as callously as she had done him.
Besides, he would soon have Solonge’s wealth and be on his way. Marie would just have to content herself with lesser men, for he would most certainly no longer be available to her.
He bellowed for wine, but no one rushed to serve him. He sighed, cursed, and promised himself a household of servants who lived breathlessly to see to his needs.
He deserved nothing less.
Chapter 28
Colin sat in the great hall and fidgeted, nervous as a cat. The keep was crawling with intrigues of all kinds and he could scarce wait to be free of the place. He wondered, absently, how it was that Aliénore had borne it all those years. He knew that he certainly would have fled at his earliest opportunity. He felt very lucky to be a man with the freedom a sword could buy. The poor wench hadn’t even had that to save her. Which made him wonder, and not for the first time, just what had happened to her.
He sighed, drank deeply of wine that was scarce drinkable, and wished her peace, wherever she was.
He stole a look over his shoulder at his other problem. She stood in the shadows behind his chair, still as stone. Her hood was still over her face and he supposed that was a boon. When they’d sat for supper and Denis had bid her remove her cloak, Colin had said that the lad’s face was horribly marked by the pox and shamed him to show it. He’d barely managed to choke out the lie, but what else could he have done? No sense in letting anyone here know that the lad was really a girl. The saints only knew what would befall her then. Having met the lady of the house, Colin suspected quite fully that young Henri would have found herself revealed, mocked, and perhaps even humiliated, merely for Marie’s sport.
The only thing of a goodly turn Colin had noted in the past hour was that Marie wasn’t fully the lord of the manor. She certainly hadn’t been able to argue with her husband about young Henri’s lack of manners in keeping his head covered.
Colin, of course, had his own opinion on manners in general, but he kept that to himself.
“Would you care for more wine?”
Colin looked to his left to find the viperess in question offering to refill his cup. He looked at her and wondered how it was that Denis of Solonge couldn’t see past the beauty to the exceptional coldness of her eyes. Then again, he himself wasn’t sure how to comport himself with this woman. He’d trotted out his best table manners and tried to keep his thoughts to himself. Marie, however, was apparently unused to being thwarted, for she continued to pepper him with questions ranging from how he found the weather to what he would do to Aliénore when he found her.
Colin limited his responses to as few words as possible.
“Two years,” Marie mused. “A long time for a girl to hide.”
Colin, holding to his course, merely grunted and reached for meat.
“I’ve looked in the convents,” she continued easily. “My concern for her was great.”
Colin was hard-pressed to smother his snort of disbelief. Whatever this woman had felt for poor Aliénore, it hadn’t been concern. Even Colin could tell that, and he hadn’t known her an hour.
“I sent men to Spain as well,” she said.
Colin was surprised at that. “Did you indeed?”
She smiled at him, and he shivered in spite of himself.
That was not a pleasant smile.
“I was concerned,” she repeated with that same, cold smile. “How could I spare any expense in my search?”
“Lord Denis did not search?” Colin asked uneasily.
She dismissed her husband with a look of disdain. “He hasn’t the stomach for anything so unpleasant. I took the task on myself.”
No wonder Aliénore had fled.
“Not in Spain, not in France. Not even in England, or so the reports go.” She looked up at him. “Perhaps she is dead.”
He couldn’t even manage a grunt.
“I fear your search may be in vain.”
“So be it,” he said.
“But, should you find her,” Marie pressed, “what will you do?”
Colin opened his mouth to reply, but found that his reply was unnecessary.
“Punishment would be just, I should think,” Marie said thoughtfully. “Beatings would be just. I daresay you would know how to administer one properly.”
Colin found his tongue. “I do not, my lady,” he said stiffly, “beat women.”
“She has earned your ire.”
“I do not,” he repeated, “beat women.”
“Then perhaps I should find her for you,” Marie said pleasantly. “I’m sure I could instill a proper sense of remorse into the girl, then deliver her to you meek and tractable. What think you?”
What he thought wasn’t fit for a lady’s ears, so he refrained from comment. Even so, he seriously doubted that anything he could say would shock Marie of Solonge. By the saints, the woman was evil. Colin lifted his gaze above her head to find Lord Denis calmly and steadfastly plowing through his supper. Perhaps he had listened to this venom for so long that it no longer shocked him.
Colin heartily pitied the man.
He began to count on his fingers under the table the hours he must needs remain before he could depart.
The evening lasted too far into the night, as far as he was concerned. What he wanted was to seek his bed, then rise, dredge up a few polite words, and bolt back to the convent where souls were pure and motives uncomplicated. The intrigue that flowed through Solonge like a river befouled with refuse was almost enough to finish him, and he considered himself quite above being finished by almost anything.
And then a ray of hope broke through the clouds.
Marie yawned.
It wasn’t the delicate yawn of a woman whose life was governed by Gillian’s rules. It was the yawn of a fierce huntress who had finished her kill, but knew without a doubt that she would kill again and be satisfied.
It sent chills down his spine.
Marie looked at him. “My servant will show you your chamber.” She smiled that smile that made his skin crawl. “Solonge’s finest, of course. A warrior of your stature deserves nothing less.”
He inclined his head, but found he could muster no polite response.
Marie rose and stretched.
Colin gulped.
She leaned over and twined her arms around her husband’s neck. “Don’t be long, my love. I’ve
needs that cannot wait.”
“Of course,” Denis said absently.
“I must make a short visit to the stables,” Marie said. “A quick nighttime assignation, you know.”
“How skillfully you jest,” Denis murmured.
Marie looked at Colin, winked, then sauntered from the hall.
Colin reached for his wine and downed it in a single gulp. Then he set the cup back down with shaking hands and looked over his shoulder.
“Henri,” he rasped, “come and sit. Eat. There’s ample left for you.” He held out Marie’s chair.
The girl balked.
“Come,” Colin said impatiently. “Nothing here to fear. Lord Denis will not snap at you, I’ll warrant.”
Lord Denis continued to stare vacantly out into the midst of the great hall and offered no comment.
Yet still Henri didn’t move.
Colin sighed, reached around and pulled the girl forward. He sat her down, then shoved a trencher in front of her. “Eat,” he commanded. “The wine is ghastly, but it will wet your throat. Eat whilst you may, for who knows when you’ll have this kind of fare again.”
Hopefully only if they both were thrust down to Hell, but he didn’t say as much.
He wondered if politeness required him to converse with Lord Denis, but the man seemed burdened by his own black thoughts, so Colin forbore. Instead, he found himself watching as slight, delicate fingers reached out and hesitantly brought food to a mouth that, though Colin couldn’t see it, he knew was just as delicate. He was momentarily tempted to thrust those pleasing observations away, then shrugged his shoulders. He’d endured almost the entire day in this hell-hole; didn’t he deserve a respite? And what better a respite than watching Henri and allowing himself the luxury of wondering about her?
He leaned his elbows on the table and scratched his cheek thoughtfully with his dagger. What was a beautiful girl such as this doing hiding in filthy lad’s clothes, wielding a sword, and pretending to be what she was not? And what could possibly inspire such fear in a gel that she would choose this life?
She said she’d fled a cruel mistress. Immediately Marie’s image came to mind, but Colin shook that aside with the appropriate shudder. Passing unpleasant woman. Or had Henri lied to him? Was she fleeing a cruel mistress, or a cruel betrothed?
A cruel betrothed, aye, that was likely the answer. But could there really be a man so fierce and terrible that any alternative besides wedding with him could seem appealing? An alternative such as dressing as a man?
Colin searched through his vast memories of men he’d encountered in the course of his life and came up with no one who seemed that intimidating to him. He supposed many might feel that Christopher of Blackmour was that ruthless. Though he merely thought his dearest friend a fierce and cunning warrior, he knew that others found the man quite terrifying. He remembered vividly going to fetch Gillian and the fear she had displayed when she’d learned to whom she was to be wed. But who could possibly have a fouler reputation that Christopher of Blackmour?
He thought on that for quite some time.
Then he stopped scratching.
And the blade fell from his hand.
Who indeed?
“My lord Berkhamshire?”
Colin blinked to find Lord Denis looking at him with concern.
“Are you unwell?” he asked.
Colin looked at Lord Denis, then about the hall at the few guardsmen still left there, then finally at Henri. He found that, for the first time in his life, he simply could not form words. The realizations piled upon him so quickly and with such force, he could do no more than struggle under their weight.
He was the kind of man brides fled from—or pretended life-threatening maladies to avoid wedding with. His was the reputation that sent maids and men alike scurrying for cover with prayers for deliverance on their lips. He was a betrothed fierce enough of reputation to leave a maid thinking she had no choice but to flee into hose for safety.
Was he the betrothed this girl had been fleeing?
If so, that would make her...
Aliénore of Solonge.
Colin looked at her, blinked, then blinked again.
Then he clapped his hand to his head and wondered where it was he’d lost all sense. This couldn’t be Aliénore. It couldn’t be. This wench was full of wit and courage. Aliénore was full of, well, he didn’t know what she was full of, but it couldn’t be those fine, manly traits. She was likely soft, mewing, and afeared of her own shadow. After all, she’d fled him, had she not? Nay, that wench possessed no redeeming qualities, no courage, no cleverness.
Not like his Henri.
Then again, Henri had certainly been terrified of him at first.
He retrieved his dagger from where it had come close to impaling him high up on the thigh—too high, he noticed with alarm—and used it to pick carefully through the remaining meat on the wooden trencher before him. He put the pieces one by one before Henri, on the pretense of feeding her, when he was in truth looking very closely to see what sort of creature she might really be. He could see little inside her hood except the shape of her nose.
A nose, he discovered upon further study, that looked a damned sight like a feminine version of Denis of Solonge’s.
He cast about frantically for a plausible explanation. Noses were noses, weren’t they? Many people had similar ones, and that didn’t guarantee they were related to those similar noses. Perhaps hers was merely a French nose. Aye, that was it. Colin nodded, feeling much more comfortable.
But that comfort was very short-lived when he actually got down to the business of examining the facts.
Henri had fled a cruel mistress. Marie, perhaps? She was certainly not a servant, which could only make her either an excessively cheeky freewoman or a highborn lady in disguise.
She had served Sybil how long? He wished he’d asked when he wouldn’t have startled her with the question. He certainly couldn’t lean over now and prod her for an answer. Though finding out she’d been at Maignelay-sur-mer for a pair of years certainly would have cleared up a few things for him.
He blinked, then looked and realized that Lord Denis was speaking to him.
“Eh?” he asked, dragging himself back to the present.
“I asked you if you thought you might find my girl in truth.”
Colin looked at the man and wondered if he might have his clarity of vision just the same with a well-spoken query or two.
“Do you care?” he asked bluntly.
Henri’s shoulder twitched.
“Care?” Denis asked hoarsely. “What kind of man are you to ask that?”
“You betrothed her to me, knowing what kind of man I am. What does that say for your care?”
“I didn’t arrange it,” the older man said stiffly. “Marie did.”
“And you allowed it?” Colin asked, surprised. Perhaps Marie held greater sway here than he thought.
“I was...,” he paused for several moments, looking away. “I was not myself. Not thinking clearly.”
“Thank you,” Colin said dryly.
Lord Denis looked at him and flushed slightly. “No offense to you, of course.”
Colin shrugged. “I am accustomed to brides finding a way of avoiding coming to the altar with me. I’m not accustomed to them bolting outright.”
“Aliénore is very resourceful,” Denis admitted. “Smarter than all my lads put together is that one.”
“She sounds a tolerable wench,” Colin said, watching Henri’s hands. “Likely no match for me, but I suppose that could be endured.” Henri had stopped eating whilst Lord Denis was speaking. Now she clutched her fork and knife as if she’d fancy using them as weapons.
On him, perhaps?
“I heard you vowed to kill her should you ever find her,” Denis continued.
“Aye,” Colin said. “So I did.”
Henri dropped her knife. Colin reached over casually and handed it back to her.
“Were you in ear
nest?”
Colin made a few noises one might associate with deep reflection, then shrugged his shoulders. “I was at the time,” he said.
“And now?”
“Now ... well, I suppose now doesn’t matter, as I am unlikely to find her, am I?”
Denis pushed his chair back with a deep sigh. He looked at Colin, and the hurt plain on his face was enough to make Colin regret having toyed with Henri at Lord Denis’s expense.
“I had hoped,” he said quietly, “that the rumors of you were not true. You had given me hope this afternoon that I might find you a different sort of man. I’d wished it, for my Alienore’s sake.”
And with that, he turned and walked toward the stairs. Colin felt remorse prick at him fiercely. He clapped Henri on the shoulder.
“Wait for me. Do not leave the hall.”
Henri only nodded. Colin rose and quickly followed Lord Denis. He stopped the man halfway up the stairs.
“My lord,” Colin said quietly, “I could not speak freely before my man there, but I will tell you here that should I find Aliénore, no harm will come to her by me.”
The man’s eyes filled with tears. Colin had to roll his to keep them from filling up likewise in sympathy.
“She is a good girl,” Denis said quietly. “Beautiful and courageous. I fear she finds herself in dire straits with no hope of rescue. I had hoped, at first, that perhaps... you...”
“I will,” Colin said. “I will find her. And when I do, I vow I’ll protect her with my very life.”
“But there is so little hope,” Denis said faintly.
There is much more than you realize, Colin said silently. He merely nodded to the man and turned back to the great hall. He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked at Henri, alone and hunched over the table. Could this be she? Was there a way to know, short of asking her?