Baron of Blackwood

by Tamara Leigh

  He meant only to rearrange the tangled covers over her, but when he drew alongside the bed, his jealous eyes bade him look upon that which his hands had known.

  He drew back the covers, and as firelight flicked at the shadows and danced across her skin, his eyes agreed with the rest of him that Quintin de Arell was beautifully formed. If not for a long, thin shadow across her belly that did not join in the dance, he might have lain down with her again.

  Remembrance in his fingertips, he rubbed a thumb across them. He had felt that shadow that was not a shadow during their lovemaking, but had spent mind and body on desperate murmurings, kisses, and caresses rather than questions that could wait. Or so he had believed…

  It was not necessary to touch the scar to know it was not recent, but that was all he was certain of—until he gave himself over to thought.

  He had heard tale of only one injury done Quintin, and though he had thought it could not be dire, this one had been life threatening. Was it the same she had sustained in setting herself between her brother and Serle?

  Lowering to his haunches, he moved his gaze to her profile. How many times whilst they were at odds, especially at mention of his brother, had he seen her press a fist to her abdomen—to that scar whose length and placement told all, the result of which could prove satisfactory to Ulric?

  Or perhaps ’tis not such a good thing the Boursier woman is of good childbearing size, his father’s cruel words returned to him.

  Anger having no place here and now, Griffin determinedly put Ulric from his mind, dragged a hand down his face, and returned his attention to the scar.

  So this was what had been done to Quintin. Because of this—rather than her being disagreeable as he had once suggested—her betrothal was broken after Bayard Boursier’s cuckolding. For this Griffin had sensed her unease when he spoke of children. And on the night past, this had made her snuff the candle, as if the scar would provide an excuse for him to seek release from their marriage.

  Certes, his talk of wanting more children had given her cause to think such. And since she did not yet know him well, he could hardly begrudge her silence and… Was it deception?

  Considering his family and the Verduns were largely responsible for what could prove an inability to birth children, if it was deception, neither could he begrudge her that.

  What he wished to know was if she viewed the likelihood she would give him no more heirs as his family’s due for what had been taken from her—vengeance of a sort, for unless she was a rare woman, she also wanted children.

  Nay, unless he knew her not at all, it was not in the company of vengeance they had consummated their marriage. It had been one woman wanting the one man who would have remained unknown to her had her brother wed a De Arell.

  He frowned. Was this the reason the Baron of Godsmere had chosen to wed Thomasin—so his sister would not herself suffer marriage to a De Arell? Likely, for better she wed the brother of the woman who had cuckolded, than the brother of the man who had not only cuckolded but whose bloody clash with Bayard Boursier had caused her injury.

  Am I thinking too much? he wondered. In the wrong direction?

  Too much, he decided. For now.

  He stood, and as he set aright the covers as much as possible without disturbing Quintin, he discovered her chemise. His hands renewing their acquaintance with its delicate material and finding it intact, he tried to recall divesting her of the garment. He could not, but he did remember the wonder of discovering the skin beneath his hands was more silken than that woven on a loom.

  Griffin folded the garment, placed it on the bedside table, then opened the drawer hidden in the table’s underside and removed the Wulfrith dagger he had taken from Quintin that first day. He laid it atop the chemise, along with her meat knife he had worn on his belt alongside his own.

  Trust. As was befitting one’s wife.

  He turned back to her, bent, and touched his lips to her brow. “You could have told me what was done to you,” he whispered.

  Her lids fluttered and she murmured, “But I do not yet love you.” She sighed. “I think.”

  Griffin straightened. In her half-dream state, was love what she believed he wished she had spoken of? And why, amid the disquiet of learning she was scarred—in the midst of foreboding over the tidings to be delivered—this twinge of pleasure she would even consider loving him?

  Because if there was love, their one night together would not be the best he ever had of her. With such depth of emotion, she would get past the anger and mourning to come. The woman he had possessed, as she had possessed him, would return to him. And their dark beginning would yield to the light of an agreeable marriage.

  Prayer, he determined. First prayer in the silent chapel, then he would begin his day as if it were the same as any other.

  I am wed.

  It was the first thought that moved through Quintin’s awakening mind, and the next was that she would have liked to find her husband abed. But as revealed by the light slipping past the closed shutters, it was well into morn—might even be approaching noon. Too, with the folk of Blackwood ignorant that the solar was now a nuptial chamber, it would have seemed peculiar had Griffin not arisen in the absence of illness.

  She sat up. And caught her breath when the covers fell down around her waist. She did not recall the removal of her chemise. What she did recall were the thousand and one sensations roused by her husband making all of her known to him.

  “All,” she breathed and pushed aside the covers and peered at the scar. It was years beyond the raw, livid thing it had been, but had Griffin’s hands found it in the dark?

  She touched the place where the edge of her brother’s sword had begun its journey across her abdomen, closed her eyes, and traced the line all the way to its end.

  Had Griffin felt it? Nay, he would have questioned it if he had. Thus, he would be told of it at a time of her choosing. But it would have to be soon, for she wished to feel again what he had made her feel.

  She slid her gaze to the covers. Some were spread around her, others hung over the side and dusted the floor. Near the foot of the bed, portions of the sheet were twisted around the blanket and the blanket around the coverlet, all three connected as if they had made love as enthusiastically as…

  Heat rose in her cheeks, and she snorted at being embarrassed with only her thoughts to attest to the loss of her virtue. There would be occasions aplenty to blush when she went belowstairs and faced Griffin—which she must do soon to dispel curiosity over her late rising.

  She looked around and, discovering her chemise on the bedside table, gasped when she saw what lay atop it. And sweetly ached for what the Wulfrith dagger and meat knife told of how far Griffin and she had come.

  With a smile so true she thought it might never leave her lips, Quintin donned her chemise. But as she belted the robe over it, out of the corner of her eye she saw red. The bottom sheet also attested to her loss of virtue. And when the solar was set aright, it would tell a tale that could not yet be told.

  She stripped off the sheet and considered putting it on the fire. However, since it might later be required to prove consummation and that she had come to her husband a maiden, she folded it and placed it at the bottom of Griffin’s clothes chest.

  After making the bed, she cautiously exited the solar and gave thanks when she reached her chamber with only Arturo to witness her stealth. And a good thing his vigil was, causing any who might have sought her out to believe she was inside.

  The sun’s position revealing she had two hours before the midday meal, she did not hurry her ablutions, using the time to compose herself lest something in her manner, eyes, or voice alerted others she was as changed as she felt. Though she had long been a woman, this day she felt older—as if, in truth, she had been but a girl.

  Why? she wondered as she brushed her hair. Because in the most binding, intimate way possible, she was now a wife?

  She considered her face in the hand mirror. She
looked the same, though her eyes appeared softer and her mouth much liked its smile—a smile that would surely falter when Griffin learned of her injury.

  “Pray, prove the man I have come to believe you are,” she whispered. As she lowered the mirror, she noticed the ring. It was snug, as if it did not wish to be parted from her finger, but she wiggled it off.

  When she stepped from the stairs a short while later, the ring once more hung alongside her cross beneath her bodice.

  She was not surprised Griffin was absent from the hall while preparations were made to bring the nooning meal to table, but she had expected Sir Victor would be there to ensure she did not depart Mathe without him. How curious he was not—and nearly as curious that Lady Thomasin was not at the hearth since Quintin had not heard her voice, nor her brother’s, in passing their shared chamber.

  Only Rhys was here. Looking small where he alone occupied the high table, he was on his knees in a chair beside the lord’s seat, elbows on the table, face clasped between his hands as he frowned over his wax tablet.

  Quintin touched the shoulder of a servant who cast dried herbs across the rushes. “Have you seen Sir Victor?”

  “Aye, milady. A messenger arrived from Godsmere a short while ago and my lord and Sir Victor withdrew to the steward’s chamber to receive the tidings.”

  Quintin’s heart sped. Had the king made his determination about Godsmere? “I thank you,” she said and hastened toward the short corridor to the left of the high table.

  “Lady Quintin?”

  She looked to the boy who had addressed her directly—something he did only as was required of him in his father’s presence, and on occasion with Thomasin, who prodded him to be civil.

  Though anxious to know the tidings, Quintin longed for the boy’s acceptance, and more so now she was his mother.

  She altered her course and ascended the dais. “Rhys?”

  He heaved a sigh. “These sums are difficult. I cannot hold the numbers long enough in my head to find the right answer. Will you…” He scratched the back of his neck. “…help me?”

  Staring into eyes so like his father’s, Quintin smiled. Granted, he asked for aid the sooner to be done with a task that required him to exercise his mind before he could exercise his body, but it was a beginning.

  “Of course I shall.” She sat beside him and, for a quarter hour, helped him work the numbers. When his answers were pressed into the wax, he pushed the tablet away and grinned—though only for a moment, as if he realized he was not ready to be so friendly. Stiffly, he thanked her and was across the hall and out the doors before Quintin reached the short corridor.

  The door to the steward’s quarters was closed, but as she set a hand to it, the voice of her brother’s knight defied the door’s attempt to render his words incomprehensible.

  “Thus,” Sir Jerrard said, “Baron Boursier was forced to alter his plan to retrieve his sister this day.”

  Bayard had been coming for her?

  “Still he would be the one to tell Lady Quintin of her mother’s passing?”

  She stopped breathing. Those words…those ugly words spoken by Griffin found no fit in the woman who had awakened in his bed. They could not be meant how they sounded.

  “Aye, whether you deliver the lady home this day or my lord comes for her on the morrow, he would be the one to speak it.”

  Quintin gave her head a shake. Though more and more Lady Maeve was of a weak disposition, she was not dead. At worst, she was abed and but needed her daughter to aid her in rising from it.

  “I shall myself escort Lady Quintin to Godsmere so she may bury and mourn her mother, Sir Jerrard.”

  Bury. Mourn.

  Quintin’s hand on the door shook so violently the handle rattled.

  “My lady?”

  She snapped her head around and met Thomasin’s wide-eyed gaze where the young woman stood at the mouth of the corridor.

  Then the door was wrenched open. “Quintin!”

  She knew her mouth was open, but when she looked to Griffin, she could not close it. Nor work her tongue around words that waited on the breath trapped beneath her throat.

  He wavered before her, as did Sir Victor and Sir Jerrard beyond him.

  Her husband settled a hand on her arm. “I am sorry,” he said, his face so distorted it seemed she was beneath water looking up at him.

  Tears, she realized as she felt warmth spill onto her cheeks. Wasted tears. There was naught over which to cry. Misunderstandings did not warrant such.

  Griffin’s arm was around her now, and she knew what he invited though it would be unseemly to turn into him. Perhaps had she suffered a great loss, but not over a misunderstanding.

  She looked up. And how she feared the regret in his eyes! “’Tis not so.” She shook her head. “Pray, explain it, for I know I heard wrong.”

  “I wish you had.” He began to draw her near. “But—”

  “Nay!” She stepped back. “You do not know what I ask. I thought I heard… But I cannot have. My mother…”

  “Quintin, Lady Maeve—”

  “Is well. Aye, she refuses to stir from her bed—makes much of a small ache of the head—but when I return to her, she will be on her feet again.”

  Griffin cupped her face between his hands, reminding her of last eve when he had done the same, but then it had been to kiss her. “Hear me, Quintin. This is not how you were meant to learn of your loss, and I am aggrieved you did, but what you heard is true. Lady Maeve—”

  “Cease!” She raised her palms between them. “I do not like this.”

  “As I do not, but ’tis the truth.”

  “What my father tells is so,” Lady Thomasin said. “Your brother revealed it to me and Sir Otto on the day past.”

  Quintin nearly rejected her words as well, but when Thomasin stepped alongside Griffin, such pity swam amid her own tears that what needed to be a misunderstanding paled. Then Sir Victor appeared over the shoulders of father and daughter.

  “Your mother has passed, my lady. You have my sympathy.”

  She looked back at Griffin, heard again Thomasin’s words. “The day past? You knew ere this day? Ere last eve?”

  “I did.”

  Her knees softened, and he gripped her forearms to support her.

  “This is the ill tidings you received last afternoon.”

  “’Tis.”

  The reason he had wanted to delay their wedding night. Honorable, and yet he had allowed his ignorant wife to convince him to consummate their marriage. And Quintin, having had few thoughts of how Lady Maeve fared since telling Griffin she wished to stay at Mathe, had not been with her mother in her time of need. What had it been? Her head? Her heart?

  “Your brother insisted he be the one to tell you,” Sir Victor spoke, as if in Griffin’s defense.

  “Why is he—?” Her voice broke, and she swallowed hard. “Why is he not here?”

  “My lady,” Sir Jerrard said, “the baron shall explain all upon your return to Adderstone.”

  If only she had returned sooner, had found a way past Griffin’s determination that she remain here. Even had she failed, the effort would be of some comfort. Or would it?

  What if ill befalls me whilst you are away, Daughter? her mother had pleaded. What if I sicken and you are nowhere near to rouse me back to health?

  Something was thrusting against Quintin’s insides, seeking a way out. All it needed was one crack, and when Griffin spoke her name again, that terrible thing burst past too many cracks to count.

  Denying herself the comfort of her husband’s arms—the longing to cling to him no matter what might be revealed about their relationship—she shoved her hands against his chest. Freed of him, she jumped back and came up against the wall.

  “You said naught!”

  He raised a hand. “We must needs speak. Let us go abovestairs and—”

  “Oh, you would like that! To seduce me into forgetting ’twas you who denied my mother’s need for me to ret
urn to her. To deny me the right to give succor and receive her farewell and give my own.”

  “Quintin!”

  “There is naught you can say that will make right what you made wrong.”

  Staring at his wife, Griffin was tempted to sweep her into his arms and, no matter how she railed, carry her abovestairs.

  She took a step forward. Eyes chill, she said, “Had I been a daughter rather than a prisoner, I might even have prevented her death.”

  “I shall take you—” He had nearly said home, but regardless of her anger, Mathe was now and would ever be her home. “This day, I shall return you to Adderstone for your period of mourning.”

  And only that, he did not say.

  “I do not require your escort.” She looked past him. “I shall be ready to depart within a half hour, Sir Victor.” She started down the corridor.

  “Forget not,” Griffin’s daughter called, “this all began with you, Lady Quintin.”

  “That is enough, Thomasin.”

  Ignoring her father, the young woman hastened to where Quintin halted. “It began with you,” she repeated and stepped in front of her. “You who falsely accused my father of imprisoning your brother. You who drew a dagger on him. You who but suffered comfortable confinement for an offense so dire none would have disputed a dungeon cell was more fitting.”

  As Griffin reached his daughter’s side, Quintin lowered her chin and said, “Then the sooner Mathe is shed of me, the better for all.” She stepped around them and went from sight.

  “Oh, have mercy!” Thomasin raised moist eyes to her father. “I am sorry, but I love you too well and like her too much not to speak in truth.”

  Griffin had meant to rebuke her for not heeding his warning to leave Quintin be, but he drew his daughter against his side and kissed her head. And felt all of her ease. He did not understand why it was so hard to say he loved his first born, but he did feel that for her though he had known her only half as long as he had known his son. He ought to tell her. And he would when the time was better and it would not seem like a mere aside.