“Jean-Louis fights under the banner of the Duke of Loise, with the knights of St. Augustine, in Jerusalem. But that was over two years ago.” The mere mention of her brother’s name brought a sting to her heart.
Brother Gautier paled visibly. He gave a slight shake of his head and looked away. “St. Augustine’s knights?”
The words sounded heavy with meaning, induced fear in her heart and dread in her gut but worse than everything was the look on his face when he spoke. Sympathy. What did he know that she did not?
“Tell me what you know, Brother.” Her tone sounded like the warning it was, warning he must have appreciated for Gautier nodded slowly.
“They were defeated two summers ago in an ambush. Someone, a traitor, allowed the enemy inside, opened the gates from within. I haven’t heard of any survivors. It was a…a carnage, I was told.”
Her ears captured the words and made sense of them but they did not sink in her numb brain. Defeated. No survivors.
Impossible. Not Jean-Louis, a master at the blade, a man who could talk his way out of any situation, who could talk his younger sister out of her favorite toy or into a river despite the fact she could not yet swim. He had always been there. His smile.
His blood seeping out of him as he lay dead on the ground of some unholy country peopled by demons. The image made her gag.
“The duke…he would have written to me…”
The stupidity of her remark caught up with her before she had time to finish. No survivors. Being a duke did not hold enemy swords or arrows.
“How come I never…no one…”
Charlotte looked down at her feet.
The hem of a black habit covered the floor immediately in front of her feet when the man drew near. His hand reached up, hovered for an instant near her forearm as though he meant to support her, offer his help, then it fell back down at his side.
“I thought you knew. Everyone who’s been there does. Hasn’t anyone returned recently? They could perhaps tell you more.”
A veil of crimson descended over her vision. Charlotte gritted her teeth. He had lied to her. She would kill him.
“What was that?” Brother Gautier asked.
She must have sneered his name as she was thinking it. “Guilabert.”
“Has he just returned as well?”
She snapped her head up. Brother Gautier was so close, barely a foot away. “He returned not even a year ago yet told me naught of St. Augustine’s fall, though he must have known. He lied to me.”
“Why would he lie?”
“He knows I’d stick to the distillery like sap if I learned of Jean-Louis’ death. So by not telling me, he was keeping me in the dark, feeding my hopes. My brother left me the distillery. He left it to me. Because he trusted me. And I’ll be damned to hell if I’ll let some swine dig his claws into it.”
Her profane words did not seem to bother the brother. He nodded and took a few steps back. “My position remains the same. I was sent here to see you marry. I won’t leave until then.”
“I don’t care about the lofty task you’ve been given by your pompous master, Brother,” she snarled, letting each word drop as she would a stone. “But I’ll tell you this—and you had better listen with all your might—you must rethink your position. I don’t surrender.”
His eyes flashed. He looked angry enough to pounce. “Neither do I.”
She did not care. She had a dagger and, good God, she was willing to use it! To say mere moments ago she was literally biting her cheeks to keep from fancying this man. Of all the odious things to say to a bereaved woman!
She kicked her chin out and circumvented him but he stopped her with a lightning-quick sidestep that blocked her path. They stood practically nose to chin. Charlotte looked up at him through narrowed eyes.
Something changed in his demeanor, his face tightened even more. His lips parted while his breathing quickened. She stood transfixed by the sight of him. He broke the spell first by taking an abrupt step back and storming out of the nave, sending the door clattering against the wall.
Charlotte regretted not taking Armand’s offer to wait for her as she was not sure she could hold the tears long enough to make it home.
Jean-Louis was dead.
She looked down at the ring and kissed it.
Guilabert.
He would pay.
Chapter Four
Gautier’s heart squeezed in anguish when he stomped up the narrow stairs and shouldered open the door to his study. It collided against the wall and knocked him back on the shoulder. With a snarl, he kicked it closed. Puffs of dust swirled on the floor in tiny vortices.
Intractable was not even strong enough for her. Willful, pigheaded child! Actually, not a child. A woman. A tall, wiry, long-limbed woman with eyes the color of moist earth and lips like pink lilies. Seeing her by the side of the river, seeing her watching, had driven his journey-burned skin into a fever, his heart into a mad gallop.
Never, ever, had he lost control so utterly! Not even in anger, an emotion he knew intimately. He could swear he still felt her skin under his palms. The way her calloused hands had felt on his feverish skin. Calloused hands. On a baroness.
If she had not resembled nobility that night, she surely had this morning. Though her gown was by far the humbler and primer of the entire congregation, it still forced him to concentrate a bit more, struggle a bit harder. He had never had to fight so much for inner strength as during the service. The sight of her had all but driven the holy words away. His hands tingled for the feel of her, his mouth for a taste, his member…
With a snarl, he shook his head to clear the sinful thoughts.
How could he have broken his self-imposed vows this way? He had not always been a man of God but still, not even three years had passed since his donning the habit of a lay brother and here he was, punching the walls to forget a woman. It had not taken him long to succumb to their charms. Temptresses.
First things first though, he would meet the knight again and demand to know why he had not been better informed. His cardinal should have apprised him of all he knew instead of calling the baroness “an orphan” and keeping it at that. Details were important. He should have been given every last one. Since the cardinal obviously knew the knight, he must have known Guilabert had just returned from the Holy Land yet had not told the woman of her brother’s demise. Was this on the cardinal’s orders? If so, then why? Another thing bothered him. Had Guilabert also fought under the Duke of Loise, been part of the St. Augustine knights? If he had, how had he survived when everyone else hadn’t? Gautier hated being made a fool. Above all, he hated not knowing.
His thirteen months at the hands of the enemy flashed back in his mind with the pitiless clarity of a lightning strike. The torture, the humiliation, the privations. Above all though, the one thing that almost made him lose his mind was not knowing if he would be killed that day or the next. It was one thing to be tortured for information, for enjoyment, but an entirely different one to wonder, each stifling day and each nightmarish night if someone—anyone—was still looking for him.
Gautier often wondered and still did, how long it had taken for his duke to stop looking. How long it had taken his men to abandon faith in their bastard knight, as they’d sometimes good-naturedly called him. For faith is what had kept him going. He still remembered that night, the very worst, when his tormentors had left him battered and ruined, a shell of torn skin and broken bones, had left him to die. Only he had not. He had spent the night praying. Not for merciful death. Never that. He had prayed for life, for the strength to keep going, the energy to resist.
He had vowed that night he would become the Lord’s staunchest champion if only He would grant him this one prayer. And He had. Gautier had escaped the very next day. From then on, he had entered the service of God and never looked back. He could have returned to his comfortable life as Brenne’s master carpenter, back in his peculiar status of half noble, half lowborn. As the bastard so
n of a nobleman, he’d enjoyed freedoms other artisans could only dream of. He even could have served God this way, building cathedrals to His glory but he preferred to fight for his faith, not preach it to others.
Then Cardinal Lanteigne and his elite “guardians of the way” had taken him in, seeing how driven he was. Many were the tasks he was given, all of which he fulfilled. But this last one made him start to wonder at his cardinal’s motives. Marriage was a sacred rite, why not send a real priest, one with the right set of skills? Why send someone like him, part brother, part knight…part assassin?
Gautier grabbed the long black cape and headed back down the steps. He hoped she had already left. He was not sure he could endure another moment in her presence. His blood was already boiling. With anger. Lust. A low snarl escaped him.
The sun was high in the sky when he stepped out of the cool church. Some parishioners were still about, talking, being slothful. He gave them a sidelong look. They left right away, seeing as he did not let his gaze waver even after a good while. Father Simon had been too lax with them. The townsfolk paid a token homage to the Church as it was. By God, their own baroness looked and acted as a farmer. A male farmer at that.
Dust rose in puffs around the hem of his cape. He looked down at the road to keep the sun out of his eyes as he headed for the tavern on the other side of town. He knew he would find the knight there with his insufferable companion.
The ramshackle tavern came into view. He wanted to roll his eyes but decided it was a waste of energy. Approaching the narrow building leaning on its neighbor for support, he smelled odors which reminded him too much of the crusade—liquor, sweat and sin. With these three mixed together, a lot of good men had lost their ways. The Holy Land had claimed more than lives, it had claimed souls as well.
He meant to push against the door but it burst open and out spilled a pair of drunken men, their clothes ripped and their faces bloodied. He meant to step aside but one of them threw a punch, which caught Gautier on the edge of the jaw. His teeth grated together with the blow. Though inebriated, the man had some clout to him. Gautier sidestepped, seized the offender by the wrist and propelled him back inside the tavern. The sound of cursing and crashing announced the man had landed.
On the ball of a foot, Gautier pivoted to his right, which brought him in direct line with the remaining man, who looked more sober and much more antagonistic. A quick punch to the throat had soon floored that one. While the man bent in half, gagging, Gautier gripped the belt in one hand, the collar with the other, did half a turn and let fly. The man joined his companion in the middle of the common room.
When he entered, Gautier found both sprawled on the floor in a tangle of limbs. Silence spread in a wide circle about him. Faces blanched and sagged. Someone coughed.
“Men who wish to remain on good terms with God don’t fight their neighbor,” Gautier announced in a loud and clear voice.
Some mumbled apology or comment was heard in a corner. He scanned the place and spotted the two he was looking for. Two knights put together could not come up with the common sense to stop the men from drinking too much. Gautier scowled. He cleaved a way among the upset tables and overturned chairs and pulled one aside. Not awaiting permission, he slid it back and stood in its place.
“Sir Guilabert, Sir Lussier,” he said, not liking at all the smug look on the latter.
“Brother Gautier, join us,” Guilabert said, motioning for the chair Gautier had pushed to the side. “I didn’t know men of God shared the needs of laymen to consume liquors and speak of things unholy.”
Lussier laughed his hyena laugh. Gautier turned an icy stare on him, which soon silenced the annoying creature. “And I didn’t know knights allowed those who look to them for guidance to behave like beasts.”
Guilabert blushed at the temples. He looks drunk as well, come to think of it. A look of pure hatred flashed behind his eyes. Gautier made a mental note never to turn his back on this one.
“Speaking of birthright, a man with a status as brittle as yours shouldn’t remind his betters where their places lie. Don’t you agree, Brother?”
So his cardinal had thought good and proper to discuss his lineage with this fool. Gautier tried not to let the sting show. Hadn’t he worked hard to earn His Eminence’s respect and discretion? “The Lord sees no difference between bastards and knights.”
Guilabert narrowed his eyes dangerously but said nothing.
Lussier looked horrified. “Bastard…? Good Lord, man.”
“Be careful when you use that name around me, Sir Lussier. And I don’t mean bastard. I’ve made my peace with my blood a long time ago.”
“One only needs to lower one’s principles,” Guilabert put in with a smirk.
“Or develop one’s own mind about things.”
“Would you like something to, er, drink, Brother?” asked a girl much too young to work in such a place. Her incursion into their conversation effectively neutralized the spiraling rudeness. Gautier wasn’t a man of words but of actions. And taking any against the knight would prove disastrous for his mission. So he bided his time. For now.
Gautier forced a friendly smile as he shook his head at the girl. Lussier indicated he was thirsty and winked at her as she made her way back to the counter to get two more mugs. After she returned and placed the overflowing mugs on the table, Lussier made a rude comment and meant a grab for her waist.
Gautier reached over the table and gripped the man’s tunic then yanked him forward and put his face very close. Noise levels lowered considerably when he did. “Never treat a lady this way again, sir.”
Lussier flushed and tried uselessly to tug his tunic out of Gautier’s hand. “She’s no lady, just a serving wench, one I can up and tumble anytime I want. You’d do well to learn the difference.”
“My mother tended tables at an inn.” And she’d been “up and tumbled” by an upstart fool like you. At least, his father had had the decency to take care of his responsibilities afterward and had never left his conquest in want of anything. Except a true husband and father to her son. That, he could never provide.
Lussier’s face paled so much Gautier thought for a moment the man would keel over.
“Gentlemen, perhaps we should show a bit more graciousness,” Guilabert put in from behind his new mug. He licked foam off his lips.
Gautier released a blushing Lussier and straightened. “I must speak to you in private.”
Guilabert only shrugged. “Say it here.”
A deep breath was needed to cool his mounting frustration. Gautier crossed his hands inside the sleeves of his habit and toyed with the hilt of the hidden dagger. He would enjoy very much poking a few holes in the detestable knight’s hide. “Under whose banner did you fight while in the Holy Land? And why have you not told the baroness that her brother had died in St. Augustine’s fall?”
Now there was a strange mix of emotions. Bewilderment. Vexation. Hostility. Gautier had not expected all of this. Nor had he expected the ripple of gasps and shocked comments his words triggered. Judging from the reactions, the baron must have been well-liked. Unfortunately, the Holy Land could sometimes take a man such as this dead baron, obviously esteemed yet spit back the likes of Guilabert, in full health and with their purses filled with stolen coins. Where was justice?
That’s why the Order of Raphael exists. So that justice can visit at least some of them.
“I was told you were a man of deed, Brother Gautier, not of question.”
“And I was told you were a man of your word.”
A long silence followed his remark, during which Guilabert only stared, a tic pulling at the corner of his eyelid. Finally, he cocked his head and let a manicured hand rest on the table.
Gautier wanted to stab it to the planks, just to make a dent in the perfect skin. How had a man who fought in the crusade not have a mark to show for it? He had marks.
“Fine, I’ll tell you. I fought under the Duke of Loise, but only for a short tim
e as I am a particularly skilled rider and was assigned to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem to protect the pilgrims there. And I knew Jean-Louis had died, of course. Everybody knew of St. Augustine. But I didn’t want to tell Char—the baroness—because as women always do, she would have been too hysterical to deal with, wounded beyond reason. I couldn’t risk that. So I kept the truth from her. To protect her.”
Gautier wanted to snort in disbelief. Protect her. “I told her, this morning, after I explained the reason I was—”
“You told her!”
Guilabert leaped to his feet with the speed and agility of a striking snake. “It wasn’t your place. How dare you interfere—” he stopped himself with visible effort. Sitting back down, he took a long gulp of ale and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “It doesn’t matter. She knows now. Let’s just hope she doesn’t become too frenzied to see clearly.”
“I thought she took it rather well, seeing how unprepared she was. In fact, I’d say she took the devastating news better than most men I know. But I did sense a deep murderous urge in her. I must say she looked quite menacing when she stormed out of the church.”
For some perverse reason, he enjoyed Guilabert’s nervous countenance. “Pardon me, gentlemen, but there’s a lot of work to be done about here.”
Making for the door, Gautier waited until he was sure everyone would hear him. “Oh and Sir Guilabert,” he called back loudly, “did I mention the baroness was looking for you? She looked extremely cross.”
With this, Gautier nodded to the stunned pair and walked outside. He doubted the knight would stay around until the baroness confronted him but it had been worth the look on his face. The two men he had floored were dipping their heads in a large barrel of water by the corner of the tavern. They both nodded hesitantly as he passed.
“Keep your head up high to cease the bleeding,” he said to one who bled from the nose.
Relieved grins spread on their dirty faces.
* * * * *
Dawn barely poked over the horizon. Too early for a Monday morning, even for him. Gautier could tell by the still purple sky visible through the maladjusted shutters. He would fix those later today. An itch forced him to move under the coarse blanket. Sleep still clutched at him, pulling him back against its warm breast. He did not fight it and let the warm wave engulf him. His mind began to wander, to dull, to stray, from the narrow path he chose for it. A sigh escaped him.
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