by Meg Cabot
Hugo said, slapping his riding gloves loosely against his thigh and glancing about with seeming indifference, “The place looks fine, just fine, Reginald. I was happy to see old Webster outside. But you must find he’s a bit slow these days. You never thought to get him a hand?”
“Well, things aren’t quite the same as they were when you left, my lord. No, not at all, not at all.” The bailiff shook his head mournfully. “Your father sold off most of the horses shortly before he died. Didn’t see the use in keeping such a large stable when it was just him, you know—”
“Strange he’d have done so, don’t you think?” Hugo flicked his gloves at a shield mounted against the wall, bearing the Fitzstephen crest of two falcons and a lamb, and frowned at the dust the gesture produced. “Considering he was marrying. He must have expected his bride to have use of a mare, at least. And there’d have been children—”
Reginald hesitated, but only for a second. “Ah, the sheriff told you about that debacle, did he? Yes, a dark day in your family’s history, my lord. A sort of madness seized your father in those unhappy weeks leading up to his ill-fated wedding to that little chit—” The bailiff’s face darkened at the memory, then, with a sigh, he brightened, like a man who wished to put an unpleasant thought behind him.
“But it won’t do to dwell on those sad days, not when you’ve so many happy ones before you, my lord. Now, we must celebrate your homecoming. Jamie—” This, sharply, to the towheaded boy. “Run and tell Mistress Laver that His Lordship has returned, and see to it she prepares a meal fit for an earl. Tell her she has my permission to slaughter one of the suckling pigs—”
Jamie, who’d been watching the proceedings with hazel eyes wide as crabapples, looked startled. “One of the pigs, sir? Mam’selle Isabella won’t like that—”
“Tell Mademoiselle Isabella that His Lordship has arrived. She’ll understand.” Reginald spoke slowly, hissing the words between his teeth in the manner of someone used to having his orders carried out without question. The boy darted away, and the bailiff turned with a sigh.
“’Tis so difficult to find reliable help these days,” Reginald said, shaking his head.
“I can imagine it must be quite difficult.” Hugo folded his arms across his chest. “Particularly when you are only willing to pay them a third what they’re worth.”
“My lord?” Reginald looked perplexed.
“You heard me.” Hugo jerked his head at his squire. “Peter, go out to the stables and give Webster a hand with our mounts.”
Peter was so drunk he could hardly stand, but he was still as intractable as ever. “Give Webster a hand?” the boy whined. “Why? The old man can care for two horses. There’s only three others in the stable besides—”
“Do as I say!” roared Hugo, his voice thundering through the hall.
Peter jumped, ducked, and ran. Hugo had never seen the lad move with such speed, and was pleased that, even drunk, the boy was quick on his feet.
“My lord,” Reginald said, when the vast oak panels had clanged shut behind the hurrying squire. “Is aught the matter? Excuse my forwardness, but you seem…displeased.”
Sheriff de Brissac, always ready to appreciate a good joke, chuckled at that, and Hugo unfolded his arms and began slapping his gloves into his right palm, slowly, methodically, but with increasing force as he stared at the bailiff.
“Honestly, my lord,” Reginald stammered with an unctuous smile, “if it’s the sale of Lord Geoffrey’s horses that worries you, I can say only that His Lordship’s last weeks of life were not his best. He seemed like a man possessed—”
“Or a man whose brain was slowly being destroyed by poison,” Hugo said, mildly.
“Poison, my lord?” The bailiff raised his black eyebrows in surprise. “Poison, did you say? Aye, there was talk of poison at the time of his death. It was my opinion that the little chit he wed slipped something into his chalice—”
“Oh, no,” Hugo said confidently. “The poisoning began long before his marriage. ’Twas the poison that made him mad enough to desire the wedding in the first place.”
“But, my lord,” Reginald said, licking his thin lips with the pink tip of his tongue. “Know you what you say?”
“Indeed I do.” Hugo began to pace a wide circle round the bailiff, still slapping his glove rhythmically into his palm. “In the history of my family, Monsieur Laroche, there is no record of madness. Not my grandfather, not his father, nor his father’s father ever took leave of his senses—”
“Well, there are many things that can drive a man to madness,” Reginald Laroche insisted, turning to watch Hugo pace. “In your father’s case, it was the trickery of a young girl. A witch, some might have accused her of being, in a less enlightened age—”
“Nay,” Hugo said, never taking his gaze off the bailiff. “Finnula Crais wasn’t the cause of my father’s madness, but a symptom. The cause was poison, pure and simple.”
Reginald inhaled sharply, his gaze flying to the sheriff. “You told him, then, of what I said after the old ma—I mean, Lord Geoffrey died? That I thought ’twas the girl who slipped him something. Oh, Lord Hugo, you should have seen how she despised him. Wouldn’t stand to let him touch so much as her hand. A strange girl, most unwomanly. Have you told him, Sheriff, how we suspect her of poaching my—His Lordship’s game, as well? A murderess, a poacher, perhaps even an enchantress—”
“You lay many accusations at the feet of a simple maid,” Hugo observed, pacing more quickly now.
“Simple maid, my lord? Oh, no, Finnula Crais is no simple maid. Flaunts her womanhood for all to see in a pair of braies, rather than donning a gown like a God-fearing Christian—”
“That is quite enough,” Hugo barked, coming to a standstill directly in front of the bailiff. “You’ll not utter another word against that young woman. What you will do is produce the bills of sale for my father’s horses. You will bring me the account books, and explain to me just why it is that tallage of my father’s serfs has increased by a third. You will also inform me why it is that this winter, so many of them would have starved were it not for the kindness of the very person whom you so foully maligned a moment ago.”
Reginald Laroche must have been expecting a scene of this kind. He must have thought, did Hugo survive the Crusades, that he would be made to account for his actions following the death of Lord Geoffrey. Hugo could not prove that the bailiff had poisoned his father, though he strongly suspected that was, indeed, the case.
But he could easily make a case proving Reginald Laroche guilty of extortion and embezzlement, and it was for that reason he’d wanted John de Brissac at his side while making the accusation.
“My lord,” the bailiff cried, surprising Hugo with a smile, however wan. “My lord, what is this? You’ve been listening to village gossip. I’m surprised. You were never one to judge a man before giving him a fair hearing—”
“Ah!” Sheriff de Brissac turned one of the chairs away from the fire and positioned it so that he could watch Hugo and his cousin. Lowering his bulk into the chair, he chuckled, reaching for Peter’s abandoned wine chalice. “So let us hear your version of things, Monsieur Laroche. This should make an amusing tale, indeed. Lord Hugo, won’t you sit with me and enjoy the performance?”
“I’ll stand, thank you, John,” Hugo said, unable to restrain a grin at the sheriff’s obvious relish of the situation. “Well, let’s hear it, Reginald,” he said, folding his arms again. “Start with the horses.”
“Well, ’twas so long ago, I can hardly remember, but I seem to recall one of them sickened, and then the others, until finally, near all had to be destroyed—”
“And so my father didn’t sell them?”
“’Twould seem I was mistaken in my initial statement, my lord—”
“And the increased tallages?” What would be his excuse for that? Hugo wondered, and couldn’t help being impressed when the man came up with, readily enough, flooding.
“Aye, my
lord, flooding. The river overflowed last June, flooding near all of your property, destroying more than half the crops. I had to increase tallage, my lord, if only to replace the ruined crops and keep the manor house stocked through the winter months—”
Hugo glanced at Sheriff de Brissac, who looked thoughtful. “Aye, the river overflowed last June,” he agreed. “And it did flood a field or two. But I don’t recall anything other than a wheat field being destroyed—”
“Oh, sir, the damage was much more severe than that. Whole areas of land were under water for days—”
“And it was for this reason you demanded so much money from Matthew Fairchild for permission to marry Mavis Poole that he had to accept charity in order to pay it?” Hugo’s eyes were hard.
“Matthew Fairchild?” Reginald Laroche’s black eyes looked beady as a bird’s, and panicked as a crow’s in a snare. “Mavis Poole? My lord, there must be some mistake. These names aren’t familiar to me—”
“Mavis Poole’s family has been tilling the same piece of land for the Fitzstephens for over fifty years,” Hugo informed him disparagingly. “And yet you say her name is not familiar to you? You were my father’s bailiff for years before his death. What did you do, if it was not to familiarize yourself with the names of those employed to serve you?”
Reginald stammered some reply, but Hugo cut him off, furiously. He had had more than enough. This man, if he hadn’t murdered Lord Geoffrey, had murdered his memory, by allowing his people to starve. Hugo’s anger reached boiling point, and he had to succumb to it for the moment, come what may.
With a growl of pent-up rage, Hugo fell upon the bailiff, clutching his velvet tunic in fists of steel. Lifting the terrified man from the flagstones, the earl held Reginald Laroche above him, glaring, with eyes that had turned a murderous yellow, at the whimpering man.
“I could crush you,” Hugo snarled, “like a twig. I could toss you against that wall and break your neck—”
“My lord—” Sheriff de Brissac half rose from his comfortable chair, his expression alarmed.
“I could justly accuse you of crimes easily proven,” Hugo went on, in the toneless inflection of one who has been angered beyond expression. “And happily watch you rot in prison for the rest of your days. But I’d much prefer to run you through with my sword, and then wipe your blood from the blade upon your sorry carcass—”
“My lord!” the sheriff cried, genuinely wary now, his chalice of wine forgotten. “No!”
“But instead,” Hugo rasped, still keeping the smaller man lifted from the floor with the force of his grip, “I’ll tell you what is it that you did, since you play the innocent so convincingly—”
Placing his cousin upon his feet, Hugo wrenched the older man to him, still gripping him by the tunic. “Nothing,” he hissed, so softly that Sheriff de Brissac had to lean forward to catch his words. “You did nothing for this estate and nothing for my father. You did not concern yourself with the lives of those my father was sworn to protect and which, in turn, he willed you to serve. Your only concern was lining your own filthy pockets with Fitzstephen gold. Well, it ends tonight.”
Tossing the smaller man away from him, Hugo watched the bailiff as he hit the far wall, then went sliding down it, whimpering, his body curling into the position of an infant. Completely without compassion for the man who’d harmed so many, Hugo intoned, passionlessly, “I want every coin you extorted from my people returned to me by the end of the year. I want every scrap of paper recording every transaction you made in Sheriff de Brissac’s possession by dawn. And I want you out of my house no later than noon tomorrow. Am I understood?”
For a moment, Reginald Laroche looked up from his hands, and it was then that Hugo saw something pass across his cousin’s face that was not fear, or even agitation, but hatred, pure and cold as the killing hatred Hugo had seen in the eyes of the Saracens against which he’d fought. Only this hatred was somehow more terrible, since it was natural to be despised by one’s enemies.
But to be hated so by someone in one’s own home—that was different. Reginald Laroche despised Hugo, and had probably despised his father before him. How Lord Geoffrey hadn’t seen that naked contempt in his cousin’s flat black eyes, Hugo couldn’t imagine.
But no sooner had he himself spotted it than it disappeared, Reginald’s features schooled into an expression of anxious officiousness, as he scrambled to his feet.
“My lord, my lord,” the bailiff murmured, brushing himself off as if he’d merely tripped accidentally, and not been thrown bodily across the room. “All that I’ve done in your absence has been for the good of the manor. Indeed, many of your serfs complained, but you must know that your father coddled them. Why, they are the best kept vassals in the shire, even the sheriff will grant me that—”
“Were,” John corrected him. “Were the best kept.”
“There, you see? Your father, God rest his soul, was a kind man, but he had no business sense. I’ll gladly show you whatever papers you wish to see, my lord, but I cannot help feeling myself sorely used. Think you upon it overnight, my lord. You are tired from your journey, and perhaps your ear has been turned by some lips that are against me—”
“There’s no need to think upon it,” Hugo said, shaking his head in wonder. Verily, this man had a death wish, if he thought he could talk Hugo out of the killing rage he was in. “Tomorrow you’ll be gone, or by God, Laroche, you’ll feel the point of my blade at your back, forcing you out—”
“Father?”
A musical voice lilted toward them, and Hugo lifted his gaze toward the staircase on the right-hand side of the hall. There, with one slim hand resting on the polished wooden banister as she descended the stairs, floated a vision in purple. Skin pale as cream complemented by hair black as ebony created the appearance of delicate femininity that few women could rival. Isabella Laroche, whom Hugo remembered only as an obnoxious ten-year-old in braids, had grown up into a lovely woman indeed.
“Father?” she questioned again in her soft voice. “Is aught the matter?” Then, noticing Hugo, the girl placed a hand upon her well-developed bosom and let out a startled gasp.
“Why, Lord Hugo!” she cried, and in a few swift, graceful steps she was before him, sunk onto the flagstones into a curtsy that sent her wide purple skirts puddling around Hugo’s feet.
“Oh, ’tis like a dream! I heard that rascal Jamie say that you were here at last, and yet I could not believe it, lest I saw it with mine own eyes!”
Rising from her curtsy, her black eyes shining like onyx, Isabella smiled beatifically up at him. Hugo was amused to see that her perfectly shaped lips were rouged, since they appeared unnaturally red, the color of the pomegranate seeds Hugo had sometimes eaten in Egypt.
“Oh, cousin, how very tall you are now! I thought ’twas just a trick of my girlish fancy, remembering you as tall as that, but after all this time, to find that—Well, like a tree, you seem, just as when I was small. How well he looks, doesn’t he, Father?”
Reginald Laroche growled, no more officious groveling in his voice, “Go to the kitchen, Isabella, and see how Mistress Laver gets on with the preparation of supper.”
“Oh, Father, you can’t be serious! It’s been ages since Cousin Hugo and I have seen each other. We have so much to talk about.” Isabella made a fetching moue of disappointment at her father. “After all, Cousin Hugo’s been halfway around the world. I want to hear all about it, and about the Saracens he killed, and the sights he saw. Did you see the pyramids, Lord Hugo? I’ve so longed to see them myself. Are they truly all that people say?”
Hugo looked down at the bewitching creature his father’s cousin had sired and understood well the dislike Finnula and her sisters felt for the girl. Beautiful and sly, Isabella Laroche was, in her own way, even more dangerous than her father, and any maid who didn’t know better would be jealous of both her looks and her station in life. Isabella appeared to have made quite an effort this evening, donning a silken kirtle a
nd a bliaut with a neckline to rival Mellana’s in indecency, along with enough gold jewelry to weigh down her wrists and fingers.
“But I see my forgetful father hasn’t even offered you a sip to drink,” Isabella cooed, taking hold of Hugo’s arm and pressing a heavy breast against it. “Let me fill a chalice for you, my lord—”
Sheriff de Brissac laughed outright at the suggestive tone the girl had employed, and she shot him an aggravated glance, her slender eyebrows descending over her fine-boned nose in a frown. “Oh,” she said flatly. “’Tis you. I hadn’t seen you there. Well, what are you laughing at, pray?”
“Ah, demoiselle,” sighed the sheriff. “If you don’t know, I shan’t be the one to tell you.”
“Isabella,” Reginald snapped. “Get gone with you.”
“Father!” The black-haired temptress stamped a small, velvet-shod foot. “You are being rude to our host!”
“Lord Hugo and I are discussing a matter of importance that does not concern you! Go to the kitchens and see how Mistress Laver fares with his supper—”
“Actually, monsieur,” Hugo interrupted, “I will dine at the millhouse this evening. So you needn’t concern yourselves—or Mistress Laver—with my supper, though I’m certain Sheriff de Brissac, who’ll be staying here to help you, monsieur, with your packing, would appreciate a bite to eat.”
“Dine at the millhouse?” cried Isabella, her tone horrified. She’d heard nothing beyond that. “Whatever will you be dining there for? We can prepare a better supper for you than can be had at the millhouse—”
“Possibly.” Sheriff de Brissac laughed. “Possibly, demoiselle. But you cannot provide the kind of company His Lordship’s been keeping these past few days.”
“Whatever does he mean?” Isabella turned accusing eyes up at Hugo. “What is he talking about, Your Lordship?”
Hugo, reluctant to bring up Finnula’s name, which had been bandied about much too liberally for his liking in recent conversation, only shrugged dismissively. “You’ll remember what I said, monsieur,” he said, leveling a deadly glare at the bailiff. “No later than noon tomorrow.”
