Richard raised his hand in denial. “Nay, I wouldst not.”
Again Stephen settled back. “Then, beyond your troubles with the Welsh what could possibly hinder the proposed marriage?”
The older man’s expression remained closed. “That, Sir Knight, I will allow you to see for yourself.”
Without another word, Lord Richard beckoned the serving woman to him. When she arrived, he said, “Go and ask my lady wife to attend me here in the hall. And tell her I wish for her to bring our daughter with her.” He stopped her then as she prepared to leave, his eyes stern. “And make no mention of what you heard here.”
The woman nodded briefly, then hurried off. She was making an obvious effort not to look in Stephen’s direction, but her expression was resentful.
Stephen could see that this news had come as an unpleasant surprise for those at Malvern. In time they must all come to accept it.
As she left, Stephen realized that sending for the girl was a good idea. He would have need to gauge her reaction to the king’s wishes. Mayhap the girl would not be as set against the plan as her parents. That would be of great help to his cause, for in the end she was the one who must agree to the marriage.
While they waited, Stephen did try but was unable to gain any further information from the Lord of Malvern. The baron seemed to take an almost perverse pleasure from withholding his secret knowledge concerning his wife’s intentions for the girl. The knight decided to allow the matter to rest.
He would discover the facts soon enough.
But he was determined not to let whatever it was stand in his way. He had been given many tasks to perform in his duties to the crown. He knew that though this one be clearly difficult, he was not about to admit defeat at the onset.
Stephen felt certain he could see this through.
And once it was settled, there was the matter of the woman from the wood. Though he knew it was pure foolhardiness on his part, Stephen could not dismiss the notion of trying to locate her.
His body tightened at the very idea. Be she some nobleman’s bastard, he would surely be able to come up with the coin to loosen any possible resistance.
But once more he dragged his thoughts back to the present. Not until Stephen had seen to his official duties would he be free to pursue his own interests.
With impatience, he turned to the doorway through which he expected Lord Grayson’s wife and daughter to come.
Chapter Two
Just a short time later, Stephen watched as two female figures came to the arched doorway of the hall. The light from the narrow windows was not bright on that end of the hall at this hour and, as they paused at the other end of the wide stone chamber, the two were cloaked in shadow.
The first, a slender woman of perhaps forty entered after only a moment’s hesitation. She was dressed in simple but well-made garments of dark blue samite, and her head was covered by a dark veil and wimple. A ring of keys rode the belt at her waist and she approached Richard Grayson with stiff formality. “You sent for me, my lord husband.” She nodded, her brown eyes fixed on the one she addressed without affection.
Stephen could see that she had surely once been a pretty maid. But now her expression was tightly fixed and unyielding, leaving her features pinched.
Grayson turned to Stephen, no hint of his feelings on his face. “Allow me to present my wife, the Lady Mary.”
She made no attempt at speech, simply stared at him coolly.
Her husband gestured toward Stephen. “My lady, this is Sir Stephen Clayburn, he is come here from King Edward.”
Stephen nodded and uttered a polite greeting. “Lady Grayson.” There seemed little about this woman to lend such awe in her husband, though she did appear somewhat ill-tempered.
Lady Grayson’s expression was rife with displeasure, her lips set in a firm line. Considering the fact that her husband had expressly forbidden the serving woman to tell his wife of Stephen’s purpose in being there, her attitude was surprising.
He wondered if her reaction was directed toward himself, her husband, or just a sign of a sour nature. He hoped she had not passed it on to her daughter if the latter was the case.
With curiosity, Stephen’s gaze strayed to the other female who still lingered in the shadows beside the doorway.
Stephen became aware of Lord Grayson’s attention and turned to the other man to find a smile on his handsome face. Not that there was any real humor in it. That grin bespoke more a sense of resignation and pity for Stephen.
Unsure as to the cause of either emotion, Stephen turned his attention back to the girl.
“My daughter, Fellis,” the older man confirmed. His tone became one of impatience. “Come here, girl, into the light where we can see you. You have no need to fear.”
She hesitated still, only her shoulders shifted as if with indecision.
Lady Grayson spoke and her tone was filled with suspicion. “Why are we here, Richard?” she asked. “Why have you sent for Fellis to come to the hall and meet this man.”
When Stephen looked at her, she was staring at Lord Grayson with open hostility. “I hope you have not finally given in to your selfish desire to try to wed our daughter to some hopeful suitor. He will only end in leaving here disappointed.”
Richard laughed, still without humor. “Not I, my dear. And this man is no suitor, so you may cast your righteous indignation toward him away. He has not come here to marry our precious daughter. Though you will be equally displeased when you find out why he has come.”
Stephen frowned. The relationship between husband and wife was more openly antagonistic than any he’d seen. His own parents had indeed argued in their marriage before they had succumbed to the plague, yet there had been no hint of the bitterness that clearly existed between these two.
Yet that was not his concern. Getting their daughter married was, and he wondered at the strange remarks Lady Mary had made concerning her fears that Lord Richard had brought the knight to Malvern as a suitor. The subject was clearly a heated one.
But he stopped himself there. What had gone before mattered not in the least. The future was paramount and Stephen was not going to allow them to digress into an argument about the situation before he’d even had a chance to reason with the girl.
He was certain that, given an opportunity to see what her duty was, the maid would do as she must.
Thinking to expedite the process of explaining the situation, Stephen called out softly, speaking directly to the girl. “Do not shy from me, Maid Grayson, I am not here to do you harm. As your father has told you there is nothing to fear from me.”
She stepped farther into the room and stood in the soft golden glow of one window’s light. Still she did not raise her head.
Stephen was surprised to see the young girl dressed in a gray rough-spun garment much like that of a nun. A veil and wimple of the same dull hue covered her head and obscured any glimpse of her face from his view.
He wondered at such lowly dressing for the lord’s own daughter and swung around to face her parents with a frown. Though the mother’s cote was admittedly plain, he had taken note of the fineness of the blue cloth. “What means this garb? Did I not know better I would think your daughter had taken holy orders. Or that she must live by some vow of poverty unobserved by the rest of her kin.”
Richard Grayson faced him with a frown of his own, though he made no reply. It appeared that the situation pleased him no more than it did the younger man
His wife interjected with a self-satisfied smile. “Unwittingly you have hit upon the truth. Although my daughter has not taken vows as of yet, ’tis but a matter of time until that eventuality takes place. We wait only for her father to pay her dowry and the abbey at Hardwicke will receive her into their order.”
Stephen gave a visible start at hearing this. Even though he’d said the words, he’d not thought of them as anything beyond reprimand for the girl’s poor state of dress. Then he forced his shoulders to relax. He was not
going to let this woman get the better of him. “I think not, Lady Grayson. Your daughter is to be wed, most certainly, but not to our Lord and Savior.”
Mary Grayson looked to her husband as her daughter echoed her gasp of shock. “What says he, my lord husband? This is surely some jest on your part. Why you just said this man was not here to wed our Fellis.”
“He is not,” Lord Grayson intoned “He is come to arrange a marriage betwixt Fellis and Wynn ap Dafydd.”
Mary Grayson cried, “Not on my life. You will not marry my daughter to that Welsh barbarian.”
Richard Grayson flushed, casting an angry frown Stephen’s way. “Lady wife, you know my feelings concerning our enemy match your own. I have not given my permission for this event to take place. Only agreed to go forward with talks on the matter should the Welsh agree to comply with a truce. I have been left with little choice in the matter. King Edward himself has sent this man here to see to the deed.”
Stephen did not look at him but kept his gaze on the Lady Mary. “What he says is true, Lady Mary. The matter rests little in your husband’s hands, but in King Edward’s. He has declared the marriage will take place if it can be arranged and there is naught that can be done to change it.”
He reached inside his tunic to pull out the document that sealed Fellis’s fate. He passed the missive to the older woman, who took it somewhat gingerly. Slowly she opened the document to scan it, her expression showing her displeasure and horror, which grew steadily with every word she read.
Thinking to give the lady an opportunity to absorb the truth with some modicum of privacy, Stephen averted his gaze to the young girl. She had stepped back into the shadows by the door, her slender body poised as if ready for flight.
Stephen had had enough of this. She had no need to fear him. He spoke to her. “Damsel, please come forward so that we might discuss this rationally. Naught can be gained by hiding.”
He moved across the room in long, purposeful strides and held out his hand.
But she refused to put hers in it. After only one more brief moment of hesitation she finally did come into the room, stepping around him carefully, her shoulders squared as if fighting for courage.
When she moved, it was with a strange halting grace that drew Stephen to watch her with interest. Slowly she came forward, pausing as she stepped beneath the direct light of the window along the outer wall. For a moment her face was profiled in a fine, clear shaft of brightness.
It was then Stephen caught his breath.
It was her! The sprite from the forest. There was no mistaking the fragile beauty of her profile haloed in the whitegold light. Though none of that glorious silver blond hair escaped her nunlike wimple and veil, he knew there was no mistake.
Nothing could make him forget those moments in the forest glade and what he had seen. Each minute detail of her face and exquisite form was etched forever in his mind.
With chagrin he recalled his resolve to find her, his plans to have her, no matter what the cost. For one long moment he knew a gripping tightness in chest, the intensity of which surprised and displeased him.
God, to find her here. And worse yet, to know he must arrange her wedding to another man.
But Stephen quickly quelled his reaction. He would do what he must. Even though this was the first woman he had ever felt such an intense and overwhelming desire to know, she was not for him. It was, in point of fact, ridiculous of him to even ponder such thoughts.
He had only just set eyes on the maid this very morning. Surely he was quite mad to even concern himself with her.
But no matter what he told himself, Stephen could not force his gaze from her.
Fellis halted and glanced at the tall, imposing knight with a frown of displeasure as she passed him. What did her father mean by saying he had come here to arrange a marriage between herself and Wynn ap Dafydd? Then, as she actually looked at the knight for the first time, Fellis unexpectedly found herself giving pause, for he was devastatingly handsome with his dark auburn hair that gleamed with fiery highlights and eyes so dark a green they made her think of her secret place in the forest. Her gaze swept upward over a hard, chiseled jaw, an aquiline nose, then was caught and held by his.
For the eternal length of that one long pulse-pounding moment, she was unable to turn away.
There was something different about him, about the way she felt as he looked down at her. It was as if he were gazing not just at her but into her—into that place she had long buried where she was a woman with needs and desires like any other.
Without her consent, her willful gaze slipped down from that lean-jawed face, over a corded neck and across wide shoulders encased in dark green velvet. Not even the heaviness of his tunic sleeve could disguise the power of his arms, nor of his sun-bronzed hands, with their surprisingly supple fingers. Those fingers looked as if they would be equally at home on the strings of a lute as they would be on the hilt of the sword that hung from his narrow hips by a goldbuckled belt.
This was a man who had turned the heads of many a maid. Even to her untutored eyes there was no doubt.
But what completely unnerved her and made it doubly difficult to catch her breath was the hunger in his eyes as he looked down at her. It was as if he were drinking in the sight of her as she was him.
Fellis could not credit that this man with his strong, hard body and handsome face could be interested in her. The idea was unthinkable. It was simply her own reaction to his incredible masculinity that made her feel so breathless.
She was not a woman to draw such notice. Her crippled foot set her apart from others. No man would desire a woman who was so marked, ’twas a clear sign of God’s displeasure
Why then was he watching her with such open intensity? Then the answer flashed into her mind like a painful poke at a sore tooth. Her deformity! The man knew of her twisted ankle and simply sought to carefully study one so afflicted.
She flushed a deep scarlet and dropped her gaze. Always it was so. They could not see that inside her she was a young woman like any other and that defect had not twisted the rest of her body and mind as it had her ankle. They did not care that inside her beat a heart like any other. And that heart was vulnerable to their stares and revulsion.
Quickly she swung away from him, unable to face his scrutiny now that she knew the reason behind it.
To her great distress, her limp seemed even more pronounced than usual as she made haste to seat herself at the trestle table. But she held her head high, refusing to allow the man to see how hurt she was by his appraisal.
Her surreptitious glance darted to her parents and away. Hopefully they had not taken note of what had just occurred. She knew how sensitive they both were to people’s negative reactions to her.
Her mother was still much occupied with reading the roll of parchment and Richard Grayson was watching his wife with undisguised longing.
Fellis forced away her own feelings of hurt, aware of a familiar ache of sadness for her father, but knew she could do nothing to help. Her mother had long ago made her feelings on the marriage known to them all.
Fellis was aware that the Baron of Malvern was a lonely man, yet to his daughter’s knowledge he had not taken a mistress. He still hoped for his wife to someday turn to him.
But then, as she sighed with regret, Fellis looked to her mother again. Her gaze came to rest on the missive in the Lady Mary’s hands and her eyes opened wide as the old problems flew from her mind in the face of the new.
It had certainly hurt for the man to stare at her so. But that was naught in comparison to what his gaze had made her forget.
Sir Stephen Clayburn had said she was to be married.
She longed to look at the man who had announced such incredible news. But Fellis could not bring herself to do so in the event that she might once again fall victim to that probing green gaze. Her attention focused on the whiteknuckled hands she twisted so tightly in her lap.
Married. And to Wynn ap Dafydd, her
father’s sworn enemy. She had never so much as seen him, though the deeds of his followers were well-known to her. They were wont to rob, burn and terrorize the English residing at Malvern castle at every opportunity.
Her father had been granted custodianship of the castle twenty years ago, two years before she was even born, and Fellis knew no other existence beyond this uncertain one along the Welsh border.
Fellis looked to her mother, who had now dropped her hand so that the parchment dangled from her fingers as she visibly fought for control. And find it she would, of that Fellis had no doubt. Mother was not one to be overset by any circumstance, no matter how disturbing. She had a way of forcing things to come out as she wished them to.
Then Fellis realized that she need not concern herself with this marriage. Never would Mary Grayson agree to the match. She was determined for Fellis to enter the convent. In the past years her mother had managed to keep her father from so much as suggesting any suitor, though he still refused to pay the dowry that would grant her admittance to the abbey.
In Fellis’s eyes Mary Grayson was a more intimidating force than any distant king could ever be.
It did not occur to Fellis that she was more than an observer in these proceedings. She had been told, since she was old enough to remember, that she must enter the church.
Like Malvern castle, it was all she knew.
But her mother was not saying anything. Her pale cheeks were flushed with unhappiness as she looked from Stephen to her husband.
At last Mary Grayson spoke, and Fellis had the answer to the question of her mother’s reticence. “King Edward has deigned to command this. Why would he be so interested in the affairs of one insignificant girl?” She asked the question out of obvious anger but her tone was one of awe and respect.
So even Mary Grayson was moved by the wishes of a king, Fellis thought, realizing that her world was indeed on the verge of forever changing.
Velvet Touch Page 3
