Chapter Twenty
The knave of Bedingfield spoke truly, God rot him.” Raoul shifted his old bones on the bench. The fire sputtered, untended, casting uncertain light over those who remained after the earl and his counselor departed. “By Saint George’s dragon, I cannot regret it.” Raoul sighed. “The former duke was a terribly determined man. He would never have given up my lady.”
“’Tis my fault you were burdened with him.” Alienore bowed her head. “If I had not fled—no better than a runaway serf, as Benedict said—”
“Then you’d deprive the queen of her chancellor.” A wry smile slanted across Jervaise’s face. “Ponce was drunk when he fell, aye? Knowing the man, I don’t doubt it. He was the first to condemn me in Antioch—for my father.”
“You did the best you could, Jervaise. You did far more than he, from what you’ve said.”
“Aye, well, no love was lost between us.” He turned to Raoul. “You witnessed his fall?”
“God help me, I more than witnessed it.” Raoul crossed himself. “When he descended upon us, the duke was astounded not to find my lady. For weeks he waited, with maddening patience, for her return. He prayed, fasted, repented . . . as if to show the world he’d changed.”
“’Tis what I feared,” she murmured. “Whatever his past sins, Ponce’s repentance was genuine.”
“Unlikely.” Jervaise scowled. “He was a monster, like his sire before him, and all his kin.”
“You had not seen him in many years, Jervaise. Hardship may change a man. Perhaps he wished to redeem himself—but I denied his chance for salvation.”
“He was beyond saving.” Sounding weary beyond words, Jervaise massaged his brow. “Believe me.”
“If his remorse was genuine,” Raoul said, “my actions were reprehensible. Ponce had been here two months when Benedict summoned him to Lyonstone. The duke rode off to meet him and returned late, in his cups.”
“You see?” Jervaise said bitterly.
“It was the only time he indulged. Perhaps Bedingfield set him drunk. For when Ponce returned, he was slurring out the terms of their new agreement—a marriage by proxy. To take place the next day, with some poor lass to stand my lady’s part. Bedingfield coaxed the earl to sign, and it would have been all too legal.”
“The utter perfidy!” she whispered. With Benedict’s consent, the ploy would have worked. She’d stood but a breath from disaster—
“Ormonde stood swaying on the stair,” Raoul said, “while he explained this, how my proud lady would find herself wedded and bedded. I could not contain my wrath, to see my lady’s welfare so maligned! We quarreled—and our fine monseigneur swung a fist at me, cripple that I am.”
“Did Ponce miss his footing?” Jervaise rasped. “Was that the way of it?”
“I wish it were so.” Raoul hung his head. “But this is no such innocent tale. Nay, Ponce did stagger when I ducked his blow, but he would have recovered. Saint George guard me—I could see nothing but my lady’s desperate face, still grieving for Theobold, forced to flee like a vagabond to avoid this doddering sot! I knew after the proxy marriage, Alienore would be trapped—bound by law to the match. It flashed through my mind as Ponce teetered on the stair. The notion never struck me before that moment, I swear it—”
“Jesus wept,” she whispered. “You pushed Ponce down the stair.”
“God save me, I did it. And do daily penance before Christ on my knees for it. If you do not care to harbor a vile murderer—”
“Nay, how can you say so?” Shaking, she knelt in the rushes and embraced him. “You were the only soul on earth who stood between me and that marriage. God strike me dead if I rebuke you for it. Why did you not respond to my letters?”
He drew back to stare. “To my despair, I received no letter from you in all the time you were away. Nor any response to my missives, which I now discern you never received. I believed you were still angry with me over that ill-timed quarrel.”
“Nay, Raoul—never that.” Numb, she sank back to the bench.
Jervaise rubbed her back, and she leaned into his strength. He seemed the only source of comfort in her disordered world. Bleakly, she thought how it would be when he left her.
Alone once more, with my heart as cold and empty as my virtuous bed.
“Your letters were intercepted.” Jervaise’s amber eyes narrowed. “By the same man who has the earl enthralled through potions and witchery.”
“Such an effort!” Alienore exclaimed. “To what end?”
“To buy time for some scheme to play out.” Frowning, Jervaise dislodged his knife from the table. “Now we must learn his game.”
The lord’s chamber had long been neglected, but Nesta found clean linens to spread over the pallet. She beat the bedcurtains free of cobwebs and scurrying spiders. Vulgrin hauled water from the well until Jervaise relieved his bent old body of the chore.
Alienore attacked the dusty floor with a broom. When Benedict returned her household folk, they would find much to occupy them.
Now she glanced toward Jervaise, lounging with feet propped against the brazier, cradling the steaming cup the kitchens had finally produced. Beneath his legs Remus sprawled, unconcerned by the disorder as he scratched a flea.
Her husband had said nothing after the servants bedded down below. She knew he would remain thus, plunged in brooding silence, until she blew out the candle.
Cross-legged on the bed, she frowned as she sharpened her long-knife. She’d thought the marriage bed must draw them closer—for how could their souls remain apart while their bodies soared to rapture? Yet every day, he withdrew farther into that dark place where she was not permitted to follow.
Studying his grim profile, she kindled with determination.
“I was interested to learn you intend to return to Ormonde without me, husband. Saint John’s Day will soon be upon us.”
“It can’t dismay you.” Jervaise brooded into his cup. “You’ll be free of your devil husband. My lands have suffered a lifetime of neglect. Much is needed to put them to rights.”
“That was why you sought an heiress,” she said, brittle, the old pain biting deep. “For the letters of credit I signed for you, to replace what Ponce gambled away in his wastrel youth.”
“They’re starving, Alienore.” He hunched in his chair. “All the farmers without seed to plant, without custom on those neglected roads. I chose a new steward to replace the thief who was cheating Ponce. But my presence is needed to put matters right.”
“Starving.” She suffered a pang of guilt. Obsessed by the wrongs done her, she’d never spared a thought for the imperatives that drove him. “I did not know.”
He tossed back his mead. “Nor troubled to ask—though I can hardly blame you. This was what Henry ordered me to ignore when I came here with you.”
Her face heated. “I stand justly accused. ’Tis a noble duty, to care for your suffering dependents—”
“World doesn’t take the Devil of Damascus for a noble man,” he said harshly.
“Nay, do not malign yourself!” Jumping up, she strode to his side. His shoulders were rigid, but she nerved herself to touch him. “You are not to blame for misguided rumors.”
“Misguided, are they? Don’t delude yourself. For sixteen years I cared no more for duty than Ponce. Free will—it’s what Islam teaches. I’m damned by my own actions.”
Offering what comfort she could, she kneaded his shoulders.
He stared into the fire. “When I saw Ormonde’s ruined lands, those wretched scarecrows shivering in rags and despair, I saw my last hope. I hoped . . . through them . . . to redeem myself. Save my father’s people, as he never did.”
“Of course you would.” Understanding bloomed. “’Tis a knight’s charge to defend the weak, uphold the righteous, protect those who cannot protect themselves—just as you protect poor Vulgrin. Just as you protect Nesta and Remus . . . and myself.”
He is an honorable man at heart, I knew it! Hadn’t sh
e sensed it beneath his veneer of dissipation? Hadn’t he saved her from ruin the day they met, when he would not unmask her on the tourney field? She’d wasted so much time, blindly denying him, denying her own senses.
“Don’t hurry to cloak me in a Christian knight’s mantle.” He leaned to stir the coals, and her hand fells away. “Giving alms, easing hardship, fighting injustice—Muslim virtues, if I had them. You don’t know the weight of my sins.”
“But I would know them!” She knelt at his side. “If you will not confess to God what grieves you, then at least confess to someone who . . . cares for you.”
“Nay, Alienore.” He scrubbed a weary hand against his scarred face. “You’re worth more than that. Caring for me would be the worst mistake you could make.”
Staring into the fire, he ground out the words. “Don’t throw your heart away on me. I can’t love you.”
His words, edged in rejection and betrayal, pierced her like a sword. She’d trusted him with her virtue, and he’d betrayed that for his own ends—needs that were unselfish after all. She’d abandoned her misgivings one by one to trust him with her heart. Her voice, when she spoke, was strangled.
“What do you mean to say?”
“I think it’s plain enough.” Avoiding her, he thrust up and strode to the casement. “There’s no love left in my heart, Alienore. I can’t love you. And I won’t have you love me.”
How had she fallen in love with him? A disgraced knight—an infidel, of all men? For now she knew the truth of her heart. She could never have loved a weak-willed courtier like Thierry de Beaumont. The idealistic virgin she’d been a year ago knew nothing of love.
As always, she would confront the truth head-on.
“Whether you’d have it or nay, you cannot prevent it,” she said, low and steady. “’Tis too late, for I lo—”
With a violent exclamation, he flung the cup away, spraying mead across the floor. “Will you make me reject you outright? Where’s your pride, Alienore?”
“Reject me if you will.” She steadied her voice, though she trembled head to foot. “I will not feel shame for loving you. Not such a man as you are, Jervaise de Vaux.”
He gripped the sill in both hands, his knuckles white. “I said I’ll leave you, soon as the Scots are dealt with. Will you still love me then?”
She closed her eyes against the sting of tears, felt them trickle down her cold cheeks.
“Aye, even then,” she whispered.
“Then you’re a damn fool.” Pivoting, he strode past her frozen form without a glance. His ravaged features had never looked harder than at that moment, when he flung open the door and left her.
In the dead of night, an uncanny silence shrouded the manor. Jervaise’s neck crawled as he slipped into her chamber. The brazier pulsed red with sullen embers, barely lifting the shadows.
A banner of wheat gold hair rippled across the bed. By her breathing, Alienore slept—a minor reprieve from her unflinching questions and storm gray eyes, for which he thanked Allah. Their confrontation had all but undone him. The barriers he’d struggled to build between them lay in rubble at his feet.
Chilled, he shed his garments in the darkness. Below the bed, Remus raised his shaggy head in greeting. Jervaise scrubbed his ruff—wryly aware that even her damn pet wolf had wiggled its way into his affections.
He turned back to the woman curled under the furs, her capable hand defenseless as it lay palm up on the pillow. By the Prophet, she twisted his heart: the salt-crusted lashes against her cheeks, the shadow of grief beneath her eyes.
She suffers on my account—one more sin to weigh my soul. He condemned himself, unsparing, as he placed his knife within reach and slid beneath the furs. She’d knocked him sprawling with those devastating words she spoke so simply, with such candor.
She loved him.
Her Lyonstone pride, her convent virtue, her fury at his betrayal—so many barriers had stood between them. Yet somehow she’d overcome them all. With her typical courage she proclaimed her love—for the infidel, the disgraced knight, the bastard who lied and tricked her.
Somehow he must arm himself with the ugly words that must drive her away. Love was a dangerous weakness he could not afford. Yet even while he listed reasons to reject her, he was sliding closer, gathering her supple warmth in his arms.
With a murmur, she curled against him, turned her face into his shoulder—his heroic lady, her guard lowered, now clinging and soft with slumber. Tendrils of burnished hair, sweet with lavender, brushed his cheek. With her shift between them, surely he could hold her while she slept. He could hold her against his heart for the little time left them.
Tenderly he kissed her brow, and sank into uneasy slumber.
Fire crawled up the walls of Damascus. Black smoke stung his eyes and throat, the sulphurous stink of Greek fire. The screams of innocents floated on the wind: elders slaughtered in their beds, women raped as they fled. Steel flashed as men butchered children and blood ran in the streets. While he watched the carnage through a fog of rage and misery—watched, and did nothing to stop it.
The tearing grief for his own Isabella, his love, his beautiful wife, belly rounded with their precious baby—her blood staining the sand, already rotting in the accursed desert sun.
He’d warned her not to follow him, but she’d left her disapproving family for him—no place else for her to go. He’d been the death of her, the death of their unborn child, and he would never forgive himself or a monstrous God for it—
“Jervaise? God’s mercy, wake up!”
With a hoarse cry, he surfaced from the nightmare to Alienore’s desperate voice, her insistent hands shaking him. The wrenching images dissolved as her face hovered before him, drawn with concern, that torrent of gold and silver hair streaming down in disarray.
“All’s well.” Forcing his locked muscles to loosen, he dragged a clumsy hand across his damp face and dropped the dagger he’d drawn by instinct. Another nightmare, no more—only the memory of what he’d lost a lifetime ago.
“You were thrashing and shouting in your sleep.” Gently, she stroked his scarred cheek. “I know you suffer nightmares—there were several on the road—but this one seemed worse than the rest.”
He grunted and pushed himself up, bedclothes tangling around his hips. This revelation that she knew his nightly torment disturbed him more than he wanted her to see.
“Didn’t realize my restless sleep disturbed you.”
“I did not ask, for I feared to invade your privacy.” Flushing, she sat beside him, and straightened the twisted furs. “I thought . . . in time . . . you might tell me of your own accord.”
Tell her of murdered Isabella, of his innocent murdered babe, of the white rage that had blinded him to all save the need for vengeance against the men who slaughtered her? Allah’s heart, she was far too innocent for that tale of butchery. So he stared straight ahead, knowing his reticence must wound her again.
But this was Alienore, stubborn and determined as a king on crusade. “You cried out in a foreign tongue. Was it the Saracen tongue?”
“Aye,” he said harshly. His mother’s language, which he’d learned at her knee along with her religion, before Hugh d’Ormonde fostered him away for a Christian knight’s training. His Isabella had not spoken English or French. Too painful to share this last secret, no matter that he yearned to do it.
“Alienore.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you. I’ll find a place in the hall.”
“What disturbs me is your continued refusal to trust me. Have I ever given you cause for distrust? Have I faltered or fallen short in our marriage vows?”
“Nay.” Remorse twisted his heart. He’d given her every reason in the world to distrust him—and yet she loved him, or thought she did. He’d pushed her away to protect her from him. To protect her and those she loved from the raging demon that had possessed him in Damascus.
“I cannot demand that you tell me,” she said. “But I would like it
very much if you did. I will swear to keep it silent as the grave, if that troubles you. You may trust my oath.”
“Alienore—it’s not you I distrust.” His voice roughened. “There’s no one on earth more worthy of trust.”
Before the pain in her eyes, the stubborn hope that flamed beneath the shimmer of tears, he felt his resolve slipping, damn it. Perhaps he should tell her after all. No doubt when she learned, she’d know herself well rid of him. Tell her, then, what he’d never told another soul—so she could recognize the monster she’d married.
“I told you I was married. Long ago and briefly, in my youth.”
“Aye.” Fierce interest kindled in her features. She held very still, as if she feared any movement would silence him.
“She was a Saracen girl, young and beautiful, like my mother. Met her on crusade—after my father’s death.” The words, long contained, tore his damaged throat. “We fell in love, though her father forbade it. She . . . Isabella . . .”
How many years since I spoke her name?
“Left her family for me, left wealth and comfort to follow me into the field. I married her, of course. When her womb quickened, I believed Allah blessed our union. But that was a foolish hope.”
Quickly, without sentiment. Tell her the rest. Then she will know.
“We were besieging Damascus, and the gates had finally weakened. While I led the assault, the defenders sent out raiders by a secret exit. They found our camp and they . . . killed everyone they found there—women, children, the wounded. All of them.”
“Oh, Jervaise.” Her voice went throaty with compassion. She laid a comforting hand on his arm, but he pulled away. She would shrink from him in loathing when she heard the rest.
“When I returned and . . . found her”—he pushed out the words—“I was . . . blinded by rage and grief. I lost my sanity, the discipline that was my duty as commander. My men were . . . likewise driven.”
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