Standing with Hugh on the steps of the keep, Edlyn scanned the open drawbridge.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Hugh said.
“I haven’t said a word.” And she hadn’t. She had more important things on her mind.
“Wharton! That trunk is mine.” Hugh shouted at his man as the knights shoved half-packed possessions into the carts. Wharton gestured that he’d heard and directed it toward Hugh’s cart.
Turning back to her, Hugh said, “But I can hear what you’re thinking.”
“I doubt that.” Men milled and shouted as they led horses from the stables and fought over saddles. Stupid men.
“You’re thinking I failed you in there. That you can’t depend on me.”
“Not at all.” She clipped off the words.
“I swore I would protect you, and I will. I swear—“
She turned on him fiercely. “Will you stop babbling?”
He froze.
“I’m thinking about my sons. That’s all. My sons. I want my sons back, and I want them back now. So if you must worry about something, worry about that.”
“Your sons. Aye.” A half-smile curved his mouth. “I’ve brought you your sons once before. I can do it again.”
Hugh captured his palfrey, found his saddle, and was halfway to the gate when Richard caught up with him. They spoke together, then Hugh rode out.
Richard appeared at her side, scowling. “He said he’s going to get your sons.”
“I pray ’tis true.”
“I wanted to go look, too.”
Gently, she answered, “I don’t think that would be wise.”
“That’s what Hugh said. Ah, but I’d best call him Lord Roxford now, hadn’t I? He said I’d better stay here or fights will break out.” Richard rocked back and forth on his heels. “He’s right, damn him.”
If she hadn’t been so troubled, she would have laughed at this little boy rivalry.
“Of course, if you ask him, he’s always right,” Richard said. “How do you bear it?”
Loyalty kept her tongue silent.
This man did read her thoughts. “Aye, ’tis irksome,” Richard continued. “’Tis why I can scarcely be with the man without trying to shatter that imperious attitude.”
“That’s why you let us go.” It was so easy to comprehend the simple workings of a man’s mind. “You didn’t care about the story. You just wanted Hugh to know he owed his freedom to me.”
“I liked the story. Besides, it’ll make him grateful.” Richard winked.
“You’re a man.” Exasperation made her sharp. “Do you really believe that?”
He looked down at his shoes and shuffled his feet.
“Oh, fine. You know better.”
“I know your lord is a fair man.” He spoke strongly and stared her in the eyes. “Owing his freedom to you might grate on him, but he’ll never take it out on you. He’ll just do his best to repay you. You’ll see. He’ll find your sons.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”
Stepping down into the muddle of bodies and belongings in the bailey, she went to work organizing and packing. Richard forced his men to give up the big things—horses, saddles, tents, armor. But never would Hugh regain all the possessions from the trunks.
As she tried to place everything in Hugh’s cart, she heard a shout. Hugh rode across the drawbridge with only one figure clinging behind him. Edlyn dropped everything and ran across the bailey. Wynkyn clutched Hugh’s belt, and his white face frightened her more than the absence of her boys.
Before he even came to a halt, Hugh called, “They’re both fine. They’re coming behind with the outlaws.”
“Thank the saints.” No prayer had ever been more sincere, but she recognized now the signs of pain in the page and the way he rested his arm on his knee. “What’s wrong?”
“He broke his collarbone,” Hugh said, “falling out of a tree trying to reconnoiter the castle. They were planning an assault.”
Behind her, Richard choked off a chuckle and called for a stretcher. Edlyn heartily approved of it when it appeared; a blanket stretched between two poles, it was similar to the stretchers the nuns used in the infirmary.
“In our business, we get a lot of wounded men,” Richard explained. “And we’re constantly moving them.”
“Help me get him down,” Edlyn instructed, and the two men maneuvered Wynkyn until he rested flat on the ground on the stretcher.
Hugh and Richard held Wynkyn as she examined him, then with strips of bandages forced the bone back in place. Wynkyn cried out, then a startled expression transformed his face. “It feels better!” he said.
“It always does.” Edlyn dressed the outer skin with boneset, then wrapped the bone and his arm to restrict movement. “But he can’t go on tonight.”
Clearly disgruntled, Hugh nevertheless said, “Of course not. We’ll have to stay until the morrow.”
Richard refrained from cackling, and Edlyn gave him full credit for that. “If you would accept my hospitality further,” he said, “my men and I would be pleased to have you stay.”
Edlyn wanted to see how Hugh would react. Would he accept as graciously as Richard had offered? More horsemen crossed the drawbridge at that moment, though, and she heard the call, “Mama, Mama.”
Picking up her skirts, she ran toward the two boys perched behind two of Richard’s men, and Hugh and Richard watched her go.
“I steal what I want,” Richard said. “But if I stole her from you, I still wouldn’t have her.”
Richard was going to talk! Hugh trembled with anticipation. His adversary was going to tell what had happened during the long hours Hugh had been incarcerated in the dungeon!
Hugh waited, breathless, and Richard scowled. “Oh, stop looking so avid. You know she cleaves to you only.” He rubbed the bump on his forehead as if remembering how he got it. “You’ll be safe here tonight, and so will she, although she’s expressed her opinion of the condition of the solar, so I doubt she’s going to want to sleep there.”
Hugh lifted his eyebrows.
“Juxon was a pig,” Richard said bluntly. “This demesne deserved better than a man who fed his belly and twanged his tool and let everything else go to the devil.”
Remembering the squalor of the great hall, Hugh asked, “You mean it was this bad before you got here?”
“It’s better than it was. We’ve done much work.” Richard took Hugh by the elbow and turned him to face the keep. “See that loose stone on the second-story wall? We filled it in. Juxon apparently wanted a window, so he knocked out part of the wall in the great hall.”
“Nay.” Hugh couldn’t believe the man had been so stupid.
“Aye.” Richard confirmed it. “’Twas good for us when we besieged. Once we made it through the gate—rotted wood and no problem at all—we tossed some ladders against the keep and took it through the window.”
Hugh staggered at the idiocy of it. Even a small castle such as this was worth holding. “He didn’t deserve this place.”
“None of them deserve anything.” Richard’s lips drew away from his teeth in a terrible parody of his usual grin. “The older sons, they toss away their inheritance while we younger sons starve.”
Hugh didn’t answer. He didn’t approve of Richard. How could he? Yet he comprehended Richard’s ire only too well.
Richard shook Hugh’s arm. “When this rebellion is over, I have no doubt the royals will have won. The king will be released, and he’ll send somebody—you, probably—to take this castle back from us. He’ll give it to Juxon, and the place’ll be a ruin in twenty years.”
It was true. Hugh knew it was true.
“My lord Roxford, you have the prince’s ear. Speak to him.” Richard shook Hugh again. “Speak to him! There are worse tenants than I and my men, and we would swear loyalty to the king and never waver.”
“The prince would never give a demesne to a gang of outlaws,” Hugh said. “He wouldn’t trust you to do
his will.”
“You trust me.” Richard grinned with true mirth this time. “You trust me to let you and your men and your riches go in the morning.”
Hugh looked again at the hole in the keep to avoid admitting anything to Richard.
“Talk to the prince,” Richard said. “That’s all I ask.”
Wynkyn slept soundly on the floor beside the fire in Castle Juxon’s great hall, despite the little moans of discomfort he gave in his sleep. Edlyn tucked a rug closer around his neck and stared into his face, so smooth even in the shadows of the night. Allyn and Parkin slept one on either side of him. He was their new hero, and they couldn’t stand to be separated from him.
He was her new hero, too; he had protected and cared for her sons, and he would always have a place at her side.
Around the fire in concentric circles lay snoring, twitching bodies. Closest to the heat were all the men who had been wounded or who were ill. Beyond that were the healthy, the young, and the vigorous. For some reason, there seemed to be few of those among Richard’s men. When earlier in the evening she had told the sick to line up and she would treat them, a constantly increasing number of men had complained of head pain or chest pain or joint pain—all inexplicable, of course.
She should have thought of them as knaves and rogues, evil men who preyed on helpless travelers and relieved them of their worldly goods. Instead, they reminded her of her sons. Those pathetic eyes, those well-guarded whimpers, those tales of discomfort they would tell only her. And no matter what she gave them—an herb, a warm drink of wine, or just a cool hand on their forehead, they proclaimed themselves cured and thanked her with gifts.
They presented bolts of cloth, rings, and a lady’s saddle. All stolen from those unlucky travelers, but precious nonetheless, and all given with sincerely stammered gratitude. She accepted everything with thanks and a smile. The plight of these men she understood too well. They had no women who cared for them. They’d cut themselves off from their mothers and sisters by their plundering ways. They had no place in society, so they made one for themselves, and this place, she feared, would be the eventual home of her landless sons—if they were allowed to train as knights.
Hugh and Richard, united in their disgust of such unmanly behavior, had held court on the far end of the great hall, and Edlyn would have given much to know what topic so animated their conversation. Politics probably. She snorted. To men, such matters took precedence over the welfare of their knights.
Over their own welfare, too, for Hugh still bore the marks of battle on his face and he never sought her services.
But now everyone was abed: Hugh in the solar, Richard in a corner of the great hall. She should be in bed, too. She should go into the solar, with its broken door and its musty bed, and climb in beside her husband and sleep. Only she was too tired to swive, and Hugh was too new a husband not to want to.
“M’ lady.”
A hoarse, quavering voice called her, and she stepped over the boys to reach Almund’s side. The old ferryman concerned her. His gallant attempt to rescue them had only worsened his condition. “What can I do for you?” She laid a hand on his overly warm forehead.
“I just wanted t’ tell ye, I won’t be going wi’ ye tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?” He still shivered, regardless of the number of rugs she piled on him. The honey she’d poured down his throat had only slightly eased his cough.
“I’m too ill t’ go on, an’ I’ll have t’ be staying here.”
She looked around at the rotting reeds on the floor, the boarded-up hole in the outer wall, the dogs that snacked on cast-off food scraps, and the cat that leaped from body to body, a dead mouse in its mouth.
He said, “’Tis a fine castle. I never been in one before.”
She closed her eyes. If he thought this castle fine, what must his hut look like?
“Sir Richard came t’ me an’ told me I was welcome t’ stay, too.”
“Did he?” That surprised her.
“Seemed quite concerned about an ol’ man.”
“I wonder why.”
“Ah, m’ lady, I’ve been around many a year, an’ that Sir Richard is no’ so bad as folks say. He’s got a good heart—he just keeps it well hidden.”
Funny, but when Richard wasn’t irritating her, she thought much the same thing.
“These brigands know enough t’ give me me medicine, an’ ye know yerself I’m not well enough t’ be moved.”
She did know, and she’d been worrying about it. She thought that with God’s grace he could survive this illness, but only if he stayed put with someone to tend him. Now his cheerful resignation lifted a weight from her shoulders. “Mayhap it would be best,” she acknowledged.
His bony hand caught hers in a surprisingly firm grip. “Aye, but if ye ever have need o’ me, ye have only t’ think it, an’ I’ll know an’ come t’ yer rescue.”
His bright eyes looked black and bottomless, catching the occasional lick of orange flame from the fire and dousing it. Here, in the quiet of the night, she could almost imagine he had the power to read her mind. “If I ever have need, I’ll think of you.”
As she walked across the great hall toward the solar, she told herself she wouldn’t have need, because she was married. Married to a great warrior who thought himself invincible.
It seemed she attracted men like that.
At the door she hesitated. Dark filled the chamber with only the light from the distant fire to illuminate the gloom.
“Edlyn?” Hugh didn’t sound sleepy at all. “Come in.”
Of course he wasn’t sleepy. He’d been waiting. He’d told her earlier how he wanted her.
Men. Who did he think had been applying ointments, soothing brows, and praying for the recovery of the wounded? Hugh probably thought the elves came and took care of all that. He certainly didn’t value her labor or her skill in anything but the bedchamber.
She jumped when his hand encircled her wrist.
“It is dark, isn’t it?” He led her toward the bed. “Be careful of the step. Did you finish caring for the men?”
“Aye.”
Lifting her, he sat her on the mattress. “It’s smelly, I’m afraid. If the prince gives Richard the right to keep the castle, he’ll need a wife to set things straight.”
She murmured agreement as he slipped her shoes off her feet and turned her lengthwise on the bed. He scooted in beside her. The pillow was nothing but a bag filled with feathers from a goose that had no doubt expired from old age. The covers, she feared, crawled with vermin. It was cold and damp, and she braced herself for Hugh’s kiss like a true martyr. Instead she heard a hiss of steel from beside her head as he drew his blade from his scabbard.
“Who’s there?” He shot off the mattress.
“My lord, don’t hurt me.” In the dim light, a man stood with upraised arms. “’Tis Sir Lyndon, come to plead my case.”
“Why did they let you out of the dungeon?” Hugh asked, and Edlyn shivered at the chill in his tone.
“They wanted to put me out of the castle.” Sir Lyndon took a few steps in, and Hugh moved between her and the knight. “But I hid and came to you here. Please, my lord, don’t turn me out. I’ve been with you for years, fighting at your side, and you wouldn’t scorn me for one slight misspoken word.”
“Slight? You slander my wife and you call it slight?”
Both men were silhouettes now, blocking the square of light from the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, showing by their stances who was the penitent and who the master.
“Nay, ’twas not what I meant.” Sir Lyndon stammered, and Edlyn would bet he had broken a sweat. “’Twas the heat of battle and the embarrassment of defeat combined to make me thoughtless in my discourse. I would never speak ill of the woman you have chosen to take as your own.”
Hugh didn’t answer.
Sir Lyndon tried to cajole him, to become the jolly companion. “We’ve had good times, Hugh.” Then, with a little mo
re desperation, “I have saved your life more than once.”
“As I have saved yours. Are we not even?”
“It’s good to have someone to watch your back whom you can trust.”
Hugh seemed hard, immovable, without pity.
Edlyn couldn’t stand it. “Hugh,” she whispered. “Let him stay.”
She thought neither man heard her.
Then Hugh glanced back at Edlyn. “Will you take compassion from the hands of my lady?”
Sir Lyndon turned his head to the side, and she saw his silhouette as he licked his lips. Hugh had made it as difficult for him as he could, and that she hadn’t intended. She should have let Hugh handle this rather than interfere. Didn’t Hugh realize how much Sir Lyndon must resent her?
Slowly, as if each word hurt him to say, Sir Lyndon answered, “I will take your lady’s compassion.”
“Very well, then. You can go on with us to Roxford Castle, but Sir Philip is my lead knight now.”
Sir Lyndon leaped toward Hugh. “But you promised—”
“I know what I promised, but I promised it to a man I deemed worthy.” His hand fell on Sir Lyndon’s shoulder. “When you have proved yourself again, I will compensate you fairly.”
Sir Lyndon’s indrawn breath was audible, and Edryn wondered how Hugh could be oblivious to his ire.
“How long will this trial take?” Sir Lyndon asked in a strangled voice.
“Not so long. As you said, you have been my faithful comrade for years.” He shook Sir Lyndon, then released him. “’Twill not be so long. You’ll see.”
“My thanks. I’ll not disappoint you again.” Sir Lyndon walked out of the room, and Edlyn thought that in the middle of his dark silhouette a fire glowed.
“That went well.” Hugh sounded cheerful as he slipped his dagger into its sheath beneath her pillow and climbed into bed.
“It did?”
“Aye. He’s back in the fold and knows he must defer to you as my lady.”
“I don’t want to be the cause of discord between you and one of your trusted knights.”
“You’re not that.” Hugh lifted her so she rested against him. His warmth assailed the chill of the rugs around her, and she tried to move closer still. “An unease about Sir Lyndon has been growing in my mind, and this insolence on his part has only strengthened it.”