Lady Corliss sat in the high-backed, cushioned chair that the servants had brought from her room. The abbot stood at her shoulder, lending his authority to the proceedings and his advice should Lady Corliss ask for it. She didn’t. She said nothing. Not that she believed Edlyn, not that she didn’t; just nothing. She let Lady Blanche and her wretched servant weave tales of Edlyn’s misbehavior without changing expression.
Lady Blanche giggled, high and long. “Why would this man go to such lengths to ruin your reputation?”
It was going to sound stupid, but Edlyn had sworn to tell the truth. “Because he wants to wed me.”
From the front of the circle, Baron Sadynton called, “Why would he buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free?”
A gust of jeering laughter from the crowd almost blew Edlyn off her bench, and she struggled with her mortification. She hated the lord. She’d deprived him of his syrup of poppies, and now he took his revenge, relishing it.
A group of men—warriors, for Edlyn recognized the breed—stood back and to one side, watching the proceedings wrapped in a grim, intent silence. Had word spread across the countryside that entertainment was to be had at Eastbury Abbey? Was she to be so disgraced that all of England knew of it? Had she done so badly here that no one would speak for her?
Hugh rose to his feet, and the group of strange men moved closer. “I have begged Lady Edlyn to marry me, and what she says is true. We have never known each other as man and wife. Always have I honored her.”
Was his measured testimony supposed to remedy her anguish? He’d destroyed the new life she’d worked to build from the ashes of the old. He’d deliberately put her in the position of having to depend on him, a man and a warrior, to rescue her.
“Who are you?” Lady Blanche asked. “How did you come to our abbey?”
“I was wounded, and the battle still raged. My men fought valiantly still, so my servant brought me.” Hugh pointed at Wharton.
Why didn’t anyone ask why Wharton had led her pack of accusers to find her in Hugh’s arms? No one jeered Hugh. They all respected him—because if they didn’t, he had the ability to thrash them. They respected him because he had dishonored her and was still willing to marry her. She’d always known life wasn’t fair, but right now, the inequity of it struck her across the face.
Hugh continued. “Fearing for my life, he hid me in the dispensary and forced Lady Edlyn to keep silent and care for me.”
“How could he make her keep silent?” Apparently, Lady Blanche wasn’t afraid of him, for she smirked at him in disbelief.
Hugh looked at her. Just looked at her.
Until she grew afraid. Until she developed the same frightened respect the others afforded him.
Then he said, “Wharton, tell the lady what you did to Lady Edlyn.”
Wharton stepped out of the crowd and into the focus of attention. For the first time since Edlyn had met him, gone was his bravado. As she glared at him, he shuddered as if she’d given him elderberry to clear his bowels. “I held a dagger t’ her throat.”
“While she remained in the dispensary,” Lady Blanche chirped. She might have momentarily let Hugh intimidate her, but she had no such compunction about Wharton. “But when she left the dispensary, she could have told one of us.”
“I woulda hunted her down an’ killed her.”
Lady Blanche tittered. “As if she believed that.”
Wharton swung his head toward her and bared his black and broken teeth until Lady Blanche lost both color and audacity.
Edlyn experienced a flush of exultation, then one of the monks stepped out from the crowd and she sagged. Brother Irving, the monk in charge of the guest quarters, cast a sorrowful glance at her and waited until Lady Corliss nodded permission at him to speak. In a gentle voice, he said, “Lady Edlyn has been sneaking out at night.”
No one said a word, but all gazes turned back to her. The group of strange men exchanged glances, and Edlyn held on to the bench with both hands. She would not leap to her own defense. She would not.
“Where has she been going?” Lady Corliss asked.
“I worried about her, so I followed her,” Brother Irving said. “She went to the dispensary.”
Edlyn lost her struggle to maintain some dignity and bounded to her feet. “I only went when Wharton came and got me. Four nights! And why didn’t you say you were awake?”
Brother Irving cleared his throat. “I am not of noble blood, my lady. My father’s a baron, and I dare not speak out of place.”
Edlyn intercepted a disgusted look from Lady Corliss. She knew Brother Irving would be replaced as doorkeeper.
“Adda has something to say, too.” Lady Blanche pulled her stepsister out of the crowd. “Don’t you, Adda?”
Adda jerked her arm out of Lady Blanche’s hold. Sullen lines marked her face. “Nay. I have nothing to say.”
“What do you mean?” Lady Blanche cried. “Don’t you want to tell them how Lady Edlyn lied to you about the blood on her apron?”
“Nay.”
“What about the things you saw when you spied in the window of the dispensary?” Lady Blanche peered into Adda’s face. “Tell them about how Lady Edlyn held the man in her arms and gave him comfort.”
“He was unconscious.” Adda glared at Lady Blanche. “He didn’t even know.”
They’d been fighting again, Edlyn realized. Adda’s resentment for Lady Blanche occasionally bubbled over into the daily dealings of their lives. When Lady Blanche proved too querulous or demanded too much, Adda stubbornly refused to cooperate and a kind of war ensued.
“You saw them kissing one day.” Lady Blanche leaned forward and shook her finger in Adda’s face. “Tell them. Tell them, I say!”
“You made me stay out in the rain to spy on them.” Adda’s voice rose. “I’m not telling anything!”
Lady Blanche reached out and grabbed Adda’s wimple and a handful of hair and jerked. Adda went down on her knees with the pain, then twisted around and bit Lady Blanche on the leg. Lady Blanche fell. The crowd closed in, shouting encouragement as if they were fighting dogs.
Edlyn again thanked God for helping her make the decision she’d made eight years ago. It was the right one, she knew.
Lady Corliss didn’t say a word; she just walked over to the two older, dumpling-shaped women and stood above them. With last-minute hissing, the women halted their combat. Lady Blanche tried to stand and stumbled on her own hem, and Adda laughed nastily.
“She started it,” Lady Blanche said. “You saw that, surely.”
Lady Corliss remained quiet.
“You’re better to your laying hens than you are to me.” Adda got to her feet in slow stages.
“My laying hens are valuable,” Lady Blanche retorted. “Which is more than I can say about you.”
Lifting her hand for silence, Lady Corliss waited until the two women fixed their attention on her. “It would be better if you were separated until Saint Swithin’s Day.”
Betrayed into insolence, Lady Blanche said, “You can’t do that. Who will care for me?”
“You’ll both spend the time in isolation and in fasting,” Lady Corliss answered. “Neither of you will want for anything, for there is nothing you will be permitted to want.”
If ever Edlyn had wanted her revenge for the slights and insults, she had it now. The cherries in Lady Blanche’s cheeks faded as she thought of the days of loneliness and hunger she faced. And Adda, who showed an inbred skill for nosiness, looked only slightly less dismayed.
“For the rest of you,” Lady Corliss spoke to the crowd, “there are chores to be done and patients to be served. Please tend to your duties.” Every person there bulged with curiosity, but she conceded little when she said, “I will handle this matter alone.”
Abbot John stepped forward and spoke in her ear. She answered in equally low tones. He nodded, then turned to the crowd. “Didn’t you hear Lady Corliss? Disperse at once.”
They grumbled and
glanced back longingly, but they did as they were told. All except the warriors, who moved to one side and waited.
Abbot John stared pointedly at them. “Well?”
Who were they? Edlyn didn’t like the way they seemed to be of one mind. And when they responded to an unseen signal and moved suddenly out of the square, she liked it even less. They were like birds who flew in formation behind their leader and swerved when he swerved.
She glanced around. But who was their leader?
Abbot John seemed not at all concerned. Probably he’d already inquired about their purpose, and for that reason Edlyn quieted her curiosity. After all, she had more pressing problems than the rumors these travelers would carry with them.
“You two,” Abbot John said, indicating his own personal manservants, “carry Lady Corliss’s chair inside.”
Moving swiftly, the servants obeyed, leaving Edlyn, Hugh, Wharton, and Lady Corliss alone in the square.
With a graceful wave of the hand, Lady Corliss summoned both Edlyn and Hugh, and without waiting to see if they followed, she proceeded toward her office inside the church.
Edlyn hesitated only an instant, then walked after Lady Corliss. She heard Hugh speak to Wharton, telling him to meet the men and go back to the tent, and she wondered briefly at that. What tent? When had he acquired a tent and for what purpose?
Then she stifled her inquisitiveness. She didn’t care anything about Hugh. If he had a tent, perhaps that meant he would pack it up and leave.
Gathering a handful of her skirt in her hand, she lifted it to climb the church steps. She squeezed the material into a wad of damp wool and thought, Hugh leave? If only she would be that lucky.
His boots sounded behind her, the expensive leather soles thumping on the stone, and she half hoped he would try to take her arm. Not because she needed the assistance, but because she wanted to ram her elbow right into his stomach.
He didn’t touch her.
The quiet of the church only fractionally calmed her turmoil. No matter how Lady Corliss decided this case, Edlyn knew a great change had ripped her life apart. As Lady Corliss seated herself behind the rough-hewn table, Edlyn slipped into one of the chairs opposite and tried to take comfort in the fact she belonged here. Hugh did not.
But when he sat in the other chair, she could discern no discomfort in his expression or his pose. The wretched man was at ease anywhere, and that provided her with one more reason to dislike him.
From the way Lady Corliss gazed at him, Edlyn thought perhaps she didn’t like him either. “Who are you?” Lady Corliss asked.
“My name is Hugh de Florisoun,” he answered readily enough. “I have won a barony and an earldom, with lands enough to support a wife and family, and therefore I beg you for the hand of Lady Edlyn.”
He was so smug, sitting there protected by his wealth and his titles, that Edlyn couldn’t bear to look at him. With her gaze fixed rigidly on Lady Corliss, Edlyn snapped, “She doesn’t have the right to give my hand in marriage.”
“Lady Edlyn is right.” Lady Corliss sat straight in her chair, her spine not touching the back.
“Did she not, when coming to live in the abbey, vow to obey your dictates?”
How had he known that? Edlyn shot him a glare and saw him relax with a smile. He hadn’t known it. Not until she’d confirmed it with her fulminating glance. She had better learn to watch herself around him, or her life with him would be—
Nay. The battle wasn’t over yet. She wouldn’t admit defeat so soon.
“What her vow means, my lord, is that Lady Edlyn must obey my dictates or be thrown from the abbey. It does not mean I have the right to give her hand in marriage.”
“Only that should you command her to and she refuses, she will have to leave.” Hugh nodded in satisfaction. “I see.”
“That is why I have brought you here to speak to me in private.” Lady Corliss obviously disapproved of his confidence. “To see if it’s necessary to take such a drastic measure.”
“She is compromised,” he said implacably.
“I will do what I believe to be the will of the Lord God. It is He whom we must please this day, Lord Hugh, not you and not convention.”
Clearly thunderstruck, Hugh watched Lady Corliss from beneath lowered brows. Without a doubt, he had believed he had enforced his will, and he hadn’t expected to hear that the situation remained in God’s hands.
Mollified by his silence, Lady Corliss said, “Lady Edlyn, tell me everything that has happened starting with the moment you found Lord Hugh in the dispensary.”
Edlyn obliged. From the moment she’d seen the broken lock to this morning when she’d been discovered rolling in the dirt with Hugh, she told everything.
Well, not quite everything. She didn’t tell about the dragon’s blood and how she’d thanked the fairies for their cure. She didn’t confess she’d reminisced about the sights and sounds of the barn at George’s Cross. She didn’t tell about the heat of Hugh’s kiss and how much she’d enjoyed it, and she didn’t tell how his arrival had awakened something in her, something she thought was dead.
She didn’t tell any of those things, but Lady Corliss sensed them anyway.
When she finished, Lady Corliss leaned forward, folded her hands on the table before her, and asked Hugh, “Why did you do these things to discredit Lady Edlyn?”
“I had no wish to discredit Lady Edlyn,” he said with evident sincerity. “I only wish to marry her. She is alone. She needs a man to protect her.”
Edlyn snorted. “Now there’s nonsense if I ever heard it! I grew up as the chattel of first my father, then my husbands. See the protection they’ve given me.”
Hugh took her hand in his before she realized his intention. “I will not fail you.”
She jerked and twisted her wrist, trying to get free. “Only when I was forced to fend for myself did I find any security. A security which you have destroyed, I might add!”
He let go of her wrist, and she looked down at the mark his grip had left and rubbed it. Only out of the corner of her eye did she see him stand, and even then she didn’t expect him to scoop her up into his arms. She squawked and flapped. “What are you…?”
Sitting down in her chair, he settled her in his lap. He clasped his arms around her waist and held her firmly when she tried to leap to her feet. In that firm, measured tone that so annoyed her, he said, “I will not allow you to escape me, nor will I let you hurt yourself trying.”
She tried to elbow him, and he moved her so her back rested against his chest. Grabbing each of her wrists in his opposite hand, he pulled them tight so they were wrapped around her own waist.
“We’ll sit still now,” he said.
Her legs dangled. She kicked at him, but her soft leather slippers made no impression, and he retaliated with a sharp nip on the shoulder. With a cry, she tried to swing around, but he held her helpless.
“Sit still,” he reiterated.
Sit still? On his lap? With her legs resting one on each of his and her rear nestled against his crotch? “I don’t have any intention of making you that happy.” She tried to wiggle down but succeeded only in moving so she slumped on her spine. His hands, with her wrists still trapped, rested tight under her breasts. She felt stupid and squirmed up again. He helped her, adjusting himself and pulling her close into the same position she’d been in before. Now, however, his lap had developed an uncomfortable bump—long, hard, and impossible to ignore. “Just let me go,” she muttered.
“I don’t ever intend to let you go.” His breath caressed her neck as he spoke. “But most certainly not now. The sight that would be revealed is not proper for a nun’s eyes.”
Edlyn froze. Lady Corliss. She’d been so involved with wrestling with Hugh, she’d forgotten about Lady Corliss. She’d forgotten about dignity, she’d forgotten about anything but the need to get away from Hugh before he made her want to stay. Her eyes burned with embarrassment as she looked across the table and saw the abbess obse
rving her in the same manner she utilized when observing a patient. Trying to salvage the situation, Edlyn said, “See how ill he treats me?”
“Well, Lady Edlyn.” Lady Corliss smiled faintly. “Your lips are swollen, and you have a most becoming color in your face.” She rose. “You will let me pray for an answer to this dilemma.”
She moved no farther than the window that overlooked the square, but she withdrew so completely into prayer she left Edlyn and Hugh alone.
Edlyn had seen Lady Corliss pray before. She was familiar with the warmth of holiness that permeated the air, the fragrance of joy, and the sense of blessed peace. Hugh was not, and he watched keenly as the abbess communicated with God. The result of that prayer, Edlyn knew, would be final, and Edlyn prayed, too. Prayed in a frantic jumble for freedom and for assistance.
But when Lady Corliss moved away from the window, she didn’t go to her seat again, as Edlyn expected. She came right to Edlyn. Extracting Edlyn’s hands from Hugh’s grip, she held them firmly and Edlyn’s hopes plunged.
In the tender tone of a mother speaking to her daughter, Lady Corliss said, “I believe that this lord is the answer I have prayed for.”
“He is not!” Edlyn’s objection was instinctive and accompanied by an attempt to stand—an attempt Hugh easily thwarted.
“Protesting against God’s will does not make it less God’s will.” Lady Corliss seldom rebuked, giving this chiding all the more weight. “I believe it is God’s will that you wed this man.”
Forgetting where she sat, Edlyn slumped, then straightened again when he rubbed her back.
“Then the Lord remains at my side.” Hugh chuckled, well pleased. “I pray to the Lord He continue to hold me in His favor.”
His complacency sat ill with Lady Corliss, and she looked straight at him. “God does not take sides, Lord Hugh. He does what is best for us, His children. And I cannot approve of the manner in which you have wooed this gentle lady.”
Beneath her, Edlyn felt Hugh’s whole body reject Lady Corliss’s admonition.
Lady Corliss continued. “Such reckless disregard for her reputation and her peace of mind speaks ill of the man who would keep her as his life’s mate. Once damaged, a reputation is not easily repaired, and the fragile trust Lady Edlyn might have shared with you, Lord Hugh, lies shattered at your feet. It is up to you to mend both, for you, with your disregard for the conventions of courtship and kindness, have broken them.”