The truth of it was enough to make him want to sit down and weep. She was Alain’s. She was now carrying Alain’s babe. The time for an annulment was surely past. The only alternative left them was divorce, and proving that Alain continued to bed his whores would be difficult indeed. Rhys wondered if Alain had even maintained the sanctity of his wedding night before he’d sought out other companionship in the castle.
Rhys couldn’t have said, as he remembered so little of the eve thanks to the amount of spirits the Fitzgeralds had poured down him. And should he have by some miracle even marked the events of the night, he would have forgotten them straightway thanks to the awakening he’d had before sunrise the next morn. He’d been snoring in peaceful oblivion one moment, then snorting under the deluge of cold water the next. He had sat bolt upright only to find he was in a makeshift bed in a forgotten corner of the cellar, naked, with no idea how he’d gotten there. The Fitzgeralds had been standing over him, frowning fiercely, both holding empty buckets in their hands.
Such had done nothing to begin a day he’d been sure would be one of the most hellish of his life.
Gwen was wed. And not to him.
“Speak of our angel and suddenly she appears,” Montgomery said with a happy sigh. “Just looking at her is enough to break my heart.”
Mine as well, Rhys thought with a slow shake of his head. How could anyone possibly expect him to have the keeping of her for the next two years and not want her? Just the sight of her was enough to bring him to his knees.
She was dressed, and by now this came as absolutely no surprise to him, in John’s clothes. At least the lad wasn’t wearing her skirts. Rhys was just as grateful for that as he was sure John was. She carried her filched sword, and Rhys wondered at whose feet to lay that blame, for he was just certain he’d concealed it well enough with his gear. Someday he would have to take the time to find its rightful owner and pay the poor soul for it. Either that or he would have one made for her strength of arm. She would never learn any swordplay with this blade.
“Is he gone yet?” she asked.
“Aye, lady,” Montgomery said with a low bow. “You can be about your sport freely now.” He looked at Rhys and raised one eyebrow.
Rhys ignored him. “I thought you were resting.”
“I rested,” she answered promptly, “and now I am here for my lesson.”
He remembered vividly the last lesson he’d given her. He saw by the immediate flush on her face that she remembered it as well.
“In swordplay,” she added.
“What else?” he grumbled.
“What else indeed?” Montgomery murmured.
Rhys gave him a healthy shove, then turned back to his would-be apprentice. From all appearances, she seemed ready and eager to learn.
“What will you have me do first?” she asked.
Take off that bloody ring of Alain’s and flee to France with me, was on the tip of his tongue, but he refrained from giving voice to the thought. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of the things he wanted her to do.
He wanted her to look at him again as she’d looked at him the night she came to him. He wanted her to put her arms about him and tell him that she couldn’t live without him by her side. He wanted her to fumble hesitantly with his clothes as she had that night, touch his flesh with cold, trembling fingers, and lift her mouth to his for sweet, lingering kisses.
She is not yours.
Rhys scowled at the voice in his head. Surely there was some angel somewhere recording the deeds of his life, and it would be noted that before Alain of Ayre laid a hand upon her, Rhys had taken her as the wife of his heart and the love of his soul. He had bound himself to her just as surely as if he’d stood with her before a priest and spoken the vows aloud.
Now, if only that angel also kept a book of ways to take a woman away from a husband who most certainly did not deserve her. And if they both could but survive the next pair of years, Wyckham would be his, and he would have a place to take her when he managed to free her from Alain.
She is not yours to take.
“Nay, but she will be,” he vowed as he looked at her.
“I will be what?” Gwen asked, leaning on her sheathed sword.
Rhys put aside his schemes. There would be ample time to think on them later.
“A damned good swordsman by the time I’m finished with you,” he said with a sigh.
“Think you?” she asked with a smile, so bright he almost flinched. She lifted the sword with gusto.
Predictably it overbalanced her, and she stumbled backward into John, who, obviously unused to dealing with these sorts of crises, fell straightway upon his arse. Gwen fell upon him just as directly, and the sword hilt smacked her solidly in the face.
She blinked for a moment or two in silence, then began a most unladylike round of howling and cursing.
Rhys clapped his hand to his forehead and groaned. He would surely have no time at present for plotting and scheming. Keeping Gwen unbruised would take all his attention.
Saints, but it was going to be a long afternoon.
And an even longer summer. There was surely nothing they could do about escape until the babe was born, and by his count that wouldn’t happen until early spring, at least. Swordplay would have to occupy their time until then, for at least as long as she could lift one safely.
“John,” he said, “you’ll be the one to help show her how to hold the blade.”
“Me?” John squeaked from where he was still sprawled in the dirt.
He looked as terrified by the prospect as Rhys was.
Heaven help them all.
19
Gwen sat under the lone tree in Ayre’s garden, enjoying the spring sunshine and the fact that she’d managed to lower herself to a sitting position with almost no help at all. Given the fact that she was ripe to bursting with her babe, it was a feat to be proud of.
She savored the smell of the herbs and flowers that were clustered in eat, orderly patches about her. Her keepers were clustered about her as well, but not nearly as neatly and certainly not in as orderly a fashion. Montgomery was sitting near a patch of yarrow, rubbing his nose and looking about him in irritation as if he could thereby divine what it was that was making his eyes water so fiercely. The Fitzgeralds stood a few paces off with their arms folded over their chests and their customary frowns adorning their faces. They had declined her invitation to sit and enjoy the day. Gwen supposed when a pair of men seemed less likely to bend than oak trees, standing was preferable to trying to find a place between pasque-flower and Saint-John’s-wort.
Rhys was sprawled out next to several hills of lavender, twirling a stalk of it between his fingers and staring off unseeing into the distance. Gwen told herself she was happy with the turn of events. Her lessons in swordplay had progressed for a pair of months’ time the previous fall, then abruptly ceased when Rhys decided it was no longer safe for her to practice. Safe for whom was still the question. She hadn’t cut John that often, and she’d only bloodied his nose a handful of times as he struggled to show her how to hold the blade. She’d wondered at the time why Rhys had chosen his squire for such a task. Perhaps Rhys had pressed John into such service because he thought it would train his squire at the same time.
Or perhaps he had decided that he truly felt nothing more for her than friendship and therefore had no reason to want to be near her.
“Which is what I wanted, of course,” she said.
“Huh?” John asked, looking up from the manuscript on his lap. He sat the closest to her, burdened with the task of reading aloud.
“Nothing,” Gwen said.
She could feel Rhys’s eyes on her, but she didn’t dare look at him.
Comrade-at-arms. By Saint George’s crossed eyes, what had she been thinking?
“Gwen, this is too hard,” John complained.
“How can you be a great lord if you know nothing of reading?” she asked, then she bit her tongue. For all she knew,
Rhys couldn’t read. Insulting him was the last thing she had intended.
John sighed heavily and started up the tale again from the beginning.
“ ‘Not so many . . . um . . . years a . . . ago, there lived a lady who . . . who . . .’ ”
“Whose,” Gwen said.
“Aye, ‘whose beauty was re . . . renowned through . . . out all the land.’ ” He rolled his eyes. “Why would anyone care?”
“’Tis a most marvelous story of love and devotion,” she informed him.
“I’d rather read of war and slaughter,” he said, turning up his nose.
“No war today, though I’m certain I should be apologizing most heartily for it. This was my favorite tale from my mother’s finest minstrel. She had it copied down, and I learned to read from it.”
“Indeed,” Rhys said with a cough.
“Oh, aye,” she said, nodding. “I daresay I have it memorized by now.”
“All that romance has warped her thinking, if you ask me,” Montgomery muttered, looking as if he were on the verge of a mighty sneeze. He gingerly tried to move aside a few flowers that were leaning toward him. “What is this weed here?”
“Yarrow,” Rhys said absently, firming up a bit of loose soil near the base of the plant nearest him.
“Yarrow?”
“Bloodwort,” Rhys said. “Good for staunching wounds. Don’t crush it.”
Montgomery put his hands in his lap and looked at the cluster of herbs with new respect.
“’Tis a most romantic tale we are hearing,” Gwen said defensively, feeling somewhat slighted by Montgomery’s criticism of her favorite story.
Montgomery scowled. “And romance is what is wrong with the world toda . . . ah . . . hachoo!”
“Ignore him,” Rhys said, casting Montgomery a dark look. “Press on, John. The lady Gwennelyn has it aright. Learning to read will serve you well in the future.”
“But this?” John asked plaintively. “’Tis drivel! I’ve heard the tale before. The knight does nothing but worship her from afar.”
“Ugh,” Montgomery said, looking down with intense dislike at the herbs that had somehow migrated onto the front of his tunic.
“’Tis very—” Gwen began.
“Feebleminded,” John interrupted. “He sighs, he swoons, he beats upon his breast with his fist, and moons over her for pages. Saints, Sir Rhys, look you how many pages of mooning there are!”
“’Tis highly chivalrous,” Gwen said stiffly. “And I find the tale much to my liking.”
“All I can say,” John grumbled, “is I think the knight’s time would be better spent in the lists. At least then he would be seeing to something of value—”
“Oh, by the bloody saints,” Rhys growled, “give me that thing.”
John blinked at him. “Can you read?”
The look on Rhys’s face should have alerted John he was treading in dangerous waters. John, however, as Gwen well knew, was oblivious to such unspoken warnings.
“After all,” he said, plunging ahead heedlessly, “your sire was merely a—”
“John.”
“Aye, Sir Rhys?”
“Do you wish to continue to be my squire?”
Even John seemed to realize he had perhaps gone too far. He gulped audibly.
“Aye, Sir Rhys.”
“Then hand me the manuscript and do it silently.”
John handed over the manuscript without another sound, then shifted as far out of Rhys’s sights as he could get.
Gwen watched the entire scene with fascination. It was almost more interesting than the tale Rhys held in his hands. Rhys’s parents were a mystery, though she knew his grandfather had been a knight of some renown in the French court. It was he who had seen Rhys sent to Bertram of Ayre, though why he had chosen an English lord instead of a French one, she couldn’t have said.
Perhaps Rhys’s sire was a mere knight. Based on her experience, she had to conclude that being a nobleman did not necessarily guarantee that a man was noble. Perhaps Rhys had been well served by having no nobility flowing through his veins. Gwen could find no fault with his conduct because of it.
“ ‘Not so many years ago, there lived a lady whose beauty was renowned throughout all the land.’ ”
Gwen caught her breath. Now, there was a voice that any bard would envy—deep and rich. Gwen found herself immediately under his spell. She gave a passing thought to the fact that Rhys could indeed read very well, spared one last question as to where he might have learned such a thing, then gave herself over to the magic he was weaving with his voice alone.
“ ‘Many a knight came to gaze upon her beauty, then depart with a solemn vow on a quest to win her, whatever the cost. The lady knew of none of these vows, of course, for her father kept her sheltered, and the lady herself saw not her true love amongst the men who came to her father’s hall.’ ”
Gwen closed her eyes with a sigh of pleasure. How many times had she heard this tale? Too many to count. Only never had she heard it told in such a fashion, even when it had been put to music and sung by her mother’s most skilled minstrels.
And as she continued to listen, she felt the babe begin to stir within her. Obviously he was just as charmed as she by what he was hearing.
And then she realized, with a start, that it wasn’t just the beauty of the poetry that moved her babe.
She was on her feet before she knew how she had gotten there.
“Gwen!”
She would have replied, but she found quite suddenly that she couldn’t. She held out her hands and immediately found a pair of strong forearms there, ready to support her.
“The babe comes,” Rhys announced.
The pain passed and she found that she had the strength to scowl up at him. “And what would you know of it? It could be anything. Supper. The saints only know Cook is incapable of preparing anything edible.”
He looked down at her solemnly. “Have the stirrings of your babe come more closely together than before?”
“Aye, but—”
Before she could answer, she found herself off her feet and into his arms.
“Rhys, put me down!” she exclaimed. “What will Alain—”
“I would imagine, given how he’s passed his afternoons for the fortnight since his return, that he will be occupied for several hours still.”
“Rollan—”
“Is a fool I will see to when the time comes. Why do you not save your energy for the birthing of your babe and leave your other troubles to me?”
He certainly wasn’t giving her much choice in the matter. Gwen found herself being carried back into the keep before she could clear her mind enough to voice any more protests.
The afternoon passed slowly. Rhys had cleared her solar of her ladies straightway, which had suited her very well, as most of them had spent ample time in her husband’s bed and she cared not for them as a whole. Fewer souls had also meant more room to pace, which she had done for what seemed like hours.
She’d wanted the midwife from the village to come, but Alain had refused. He’d sent instead his surgeon, who had done nothing but lay out the sharp tools of his trade. Gwen had done her best to ignore him. A birthing stool had been brought by one of the serving maids, and Gwen had been tempted to have her stay just for the companionship of another woman, but the surgeon had banned her from the chamber. Gwen would have protested to her husband herself, but evidently he had already been in his cups when he’d learned that his son’s arrival was imminent. The tidings had only heralded the opening of another keg of ale.
And still the surgeon sharpened his knives.
And Rhys stood in the corner of the chamber with his arms folded over his chest, glaring at the man. At least Alain had been too drunk to wonder about Rhys’s whereabouts. Rhys was no midwife, but he was companionship.
The pains came harder. The surgeon rubbed his hands together as if he itched to be about some business. Rhys glowered all the more. They began to exchange insults
. Gwen felt her tongue loosen as well, and she began to use it generously on the other two souls in her chamber.
Somehow, though, that did not help her pass the time anymore easily.
The sun had set and candles had been lit. Rhys stood in the middle of the chamber staring down in satisfaction at Alain’s senseless surgeon. At least now the evening could progress without any more threats, blasphemy, or taking of Rhys’s name in vain.
At least from the surgeon.
Gwen was still sharpening her tongue on him, but Rhys couldn’t blame her. He’d only made the mistake once of telling her that her body was designed to birth babes, which had resulted in another string of aspersions being cast at him. Her having likened labor to his passing a large egg through his . . . well, it had left him crossing his legs in discomfort and racking his brains for something else with which to distract her. Suggesting that perhaps it was due recompense for Eve and the apple—
He still marveled that a woman in labor could move so fast or use her fist so liberally. At least she hadn’t had the energy to reach up for his nose. He rubbed it absently, somewhat relieved to find it still unbruised.
With a sigh, he hefted the surgeon and deposited him in a corner, out of the way of Gwen’s pacing. Then Rhys leaned back against the wall, half afraid to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Not that Gwen would have noticed him by now, likely. Where she had gone he didn’t know, but her spirit was certainly far away at present. She was pacing the confines of her chamber, pausing frequently to grab hold of whatever sturdy object was handy to lean against until her pains passed. She was making a great deal of noise, and the groans had initially frightened him. He’d made the mistake of interrupting her pacing and paid the price in the blistering of his ears. After that, he’d done his best to stay out of her way and make certain that no one else disturbed her.