Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sarah Mallory

  But was Clovis wondering now?

  Pepin tried to walk backwards in front of them before he stumbled, and she caught him. Giggling, he straightened and skipped forward with every word. ‘We’ve been playing this game for years and years and years, and no one is ever “it”. It’s only hide. Like Mama plays.’

  ‘Paul says there’s a seek,’ Clovis stated, his tone challenging. ‘That man found us, and Mama—’

  ‘Clovis!’ Séverine said, putting as much warning as she could in her tone. He went quiet. ‘There is a seek. I find you.’

  ‘You’re the one who hides us, which makes it no fun. I want to be caught by someone else.’

  ‘You mustn’t get caught for then you’ll lose,’ she pointed out, aware that she was in a negotiation with her children, but the boys liked games, and the hiding had always been exciting for them. Best of all, they grasped what they were to do: to stay unseen and quiet. What were they to do now?

  ‘I want to lose! I’m tired of dark places and logs, and that last place we went to, I almost got stuck.’

  Clovis’s thin body barely kept up with his sudden height. He was eight, but a full head taller than he was last year. If he was like any of the Warstone brothers, her hiding them in small spaces wouldn’t be possible much longer. The game that had worked for years wouldn’t work anymore. She needed to find another way to travel. In the meantime, she had to get them to safety.

  Clovis was tired, but she also wondered if there was another reason for his complaints. For a few precious weeks he had been surrounded by her family. Not that either of her sons knew that, but she was recognised immediately by her parents. For a time, and in small ways, the boys had had some attention from those who loved them. It made it all the harder to leave, which was exactly what she’d feared.

  Now she had to begin her other plan. The one she’d been quietly setting up from village to village for years and on which she’d spent almost all the coin she’d taken from her husband. She had over ten locations. Surely ten hideouts and traps would be enough? Enough shelters to hide them until they were young men. They could make decisions on their own then; would know what was right and wrong and not turn out to be monsters. They needed empathy, not cruelty. Compassion and understanding, not control. The world was full of people, not games.

  She’d never returned to those previous villages where her friends and loyal servants lived, where the secrets places were. Instead, she’d travelled as a widow with children. Her fine gowns had been replaced with poorly spun wool dresses, her hair bound tight, linen covered and ashes through it. When she’d felt it necessary, she’d smeared dung around her ankles every morning to keep men from looking too closely.

  Clovis and Pepin had no cares. All they wanted was a place to rest and play, and when she was fortunate they wanted her. In every place she went, she ensured they had some education. She taught them reading, arithmetic, good manners. In each new village they learned skills. In their small way they could trap and fish, and no matter where they went, the boys picked up sticks for sword fighting or wrestled. It wasn’t proper training but then, she’d seen how the senior Warstone trained his men. She wouldn’t want that for any child.

  She’d also learned tasks she never would have if she’d remained sequestered in wealth and privilege. Skills she was proud of—cooking, tilling fields, cleaning, serving, and one year she’d travelled with a healer and learned to set broken bones and assist women to birth babies. So much had happened over the years it wasn’t inconceivable that she wouldn’t immediately recognise Balthus, and even so he was different after so many years.

  The way his gaze had taken her in. The hut had been dark, but his eyes had roved over her as if he couldn’t believe he’d found her. Not surprised, not predatory, but pleased. The emotion displayed hadn’t been haughty or cold but...uncommon. Unexpected.

  The way he’d moved...something wasn’t right with his arm, and he’d hidden it before she could look at it more closely. It’d pained him. She wished she could—Séverine shook her head. He was a Warstone! If he’d injured his arm, he’d have a thousand healers taking care of him.

  Most likely, it wasn’t injured at all because Warstones had others do their will, to be harmed or killed in their place. How many times had Ian and his brothers left her in the care of his parents?

  Ian’s mother was the dagger she had never seen coming. Moments after Ian had announced at the betrothal celebration that he would marry her—moments when she should have run or laughed or played his words like a jest—she’d felt the iron grip around her wrist that had wrenched her away from gazing at a tapestry.

  That serene smile as Lady Warstone had hissed, ‘My son wants a word with you. Give him the respect of listening.’ Then she’d turned to the hall and declared, ‘I believe the child is stunned with her good fortune.’

  Parting the laughing crowd, Ian had walked towards her so she’d had direct sight of the dais and Lord Warstone, her parents, and Beatrice, her sister, whose skin had paled to bone white. Her sister, who had spent weeks on her appearance, had had her fists clenched, lips pursed, and an expression of such venom that Séverine had looked behind her to see the object of her sister’s wrath.

  There had been no one there, and no one to stop her fate. The youngest Warstone son who almost smiled...she couldn’t face him again. The rest of the crowd had displayed a mix of false delight and cunning malevolence. Spiteful glee and tittered words. Her only instinct had been to run, but Lady Warstone’s grip had dug in. Only her innate good manners and a thousand eyes had kept her from crying out, but they hadn’t stopped her eyes watering as she’d gaped at the man in front of her.

  Ian of Warstone was stunning, charismatic. In royal circles he was coveted, revered, respected, feared.

  His hair had a few waves in it. Enough to keep it away from a face carved by angels or the devil. A smile that was entirely too self-satisfied over conquests, but his eyes were the true draw. In all her reading, in all her gazing at tapestries or conversing with everyone and everything, she had never seen eyes like his. Grey with no warmth, no storms. Pale, like ice.

  ‘Perfect,’ he’d said. ‘You’re absolutely perfect.’

  She hadn’t known what that meant, not for weeks, or months, or years, but she’d understood eventually. It was a lesson hard won, but never forgotten. She’d been young, naive, innocent, and completely malleable in the hands of one who’d already been well forged. She was perfect because if his mother was the dagger, he was the sword at her neck.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Months later...1298, still in France

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said. ‘I didn’t expect such a woman to have the strength in her.’

  Balthus ignored the servant riding beside him. Henry had been apologising for months, but as far as he was concerned he could apologise for a year and that still wouldn’t be enough. It’d been almost winter when he’d surprised Séverine in the woodcutter’s hut. Now the days were already getting longer. Would it be spring before they caught her?

  Henry stretched his meaty fingers wrapped around the reins. ‘Ignoring me? And how’s that going to go when you haven’t accepted my apology?’

  Balthus had no intention of accepting any apology or excuse. Henry was supposed to have blocked the door, watched for any attacks, and, if a woman escaped, to hold her until Balthus came around. The task had been simple, direct. Henry was built like an ox. To get around him would be impossible, to subdue him, improbable. It was a solid strategy that shouldn’t have failed, and yet Séverine had taken one of those branches in her arms and felled Henry with a strike against his head.

  While Balthus had been rubbing his arm stump, feeling pity, pain, and ruminating on how to proceed, she’d gathered her two sons and disappeared.

  ‘Perhaps I need to apologise more than once a day,’ Henry said. ‘That should do it. Hasten a return to friendship betwe
en us.’

  He was trapped in a nightmare. ‘It gains us nothing. There is nothing to hasten.’

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  Where else would he be? He was on the laziest of horses tied to another plodding horse. Instead of being surrounded by mercenaries with trails of servants behind him, he rode alongside the worst kind of human: a servant who didn’t understand his station.

  He had no one to blame but himself for his companion, just like he had no choice but to ride like an infant. His lack of a left hand precluded ease of manoeuvring, but it was the constant pain, the frequent blacking out and falling off his horse that was the true indignity. When Henry had tied them together so that he could catch his master if he fell, Balthus couldn’t protest.

  Henry, on the other hand, felt it was his obligation to ease whatever awkwardness was between them by conversing.

  ‘You know, you haven’t said a word to me all day,’ Henry said. ‘Not one, and we’ve shared two meals already. I was beginning to wonder if some of the trees around here would be better company than you.’

  They would be better company than him. Or at least safer because he felt like a desperate man with sword drawn, and if this jovial man kept up his congeniality, he would be the brunt of terrible violence.

  ‘Talk to the trees, then,’ he said. ‘Or the grass, the insects, or birds, it matters not to me.’

  Henry laughed. ‘Oh, you’d like that while I slowly went mad. Maybe we could find some strays along the way. A pack of dogs would be nice.’

  ‘To draw attention to ourselves?’

  ‘My talking to trees would do enough for that.’

  Balthus refused to add any more to the conversation. He needed to concentrate on easing the breath from his body, pushing away the arm pain aggravated by the minute shifts of the reins as he—

  ‘How long is this supposed to take again?’ Henry stretched his neck.

  Weeks, months, years until it was accomplished, but what could he tell a mere butcher about obsession and thwarting a powerful enemy? How could he explain that to fail meant harm to thousands? Or that it was his own fault Séverine had escaped?

  When he’d set out on this quest of retrieving his missing sister-in-law, he’d expected years to go by, not to discover her in the first location they stopped. Now that she knew he was close, she could make it harder to locate her.

  All he needed was to ask her about a piece of parchment she may have taken from the old keep, and tell her that her husband, his brother, was dead. He’d needed to tell her and not jeopardise any of it. The irony was he’d told her none of it, and couldn’t if he didn’t find her again.

  ‘However long it takes,’ Balthus said. ‘You get paid regardless of whether you’re here or at home.’

  ‘Not complaining about the coin.’ Henry gave him a sidelong glance. ‘No man would...except those who aren’t motivated by coin.’

  This was ridiculous. ‘You imply you’re not motivated by riches?’

  ‘I had a home, friends and a trade I loved. This is practically theft.’

  Theft of his own servant. If his arm would give him any relief, he’d have travelled alone. It irked him that he needed someone. It irked that he’d chosen Henry even knowing, with certainty, that anyone else on this trip would be a far worse companion. How far he’d fallen!

  His short temper was in part because of this impossible mission that was both a vow to a dead man and a quest. It wasn’t even a vow he had made, but his friend and mercenary, Louve, who’d made the vow to his brother Ian as he’d died. That he would find his wife, and he would apologise for deeds Ian had done. That he would report that his brother loved her.

  Louve had told his brother he would do so, but they both knew a Warstone needed to fulfil that vow. Because Balthus was the only Warstone without a wife, children, without responsibilities, he’d volunteered to find Séverine, who’d been missing for years despite the efforts made to find her. That impossible task was problematic enough, but to add the fact he had ulterior motives in finding her...

  Even if she forgave him for reporting the death of her husband, she wouldn’t forgive him that he intended to steal from her. Of course, she’d stolen from his brother first. That parchment. He didn’t even know what it looked like, what was written on it. Nothing. Reynold had said he’d know it when he saw it. Helpful bastard.

  So off he was on this quest, which wasn’t his quest. Reynold was the one obsessed with obtaining the Jewell and dagger...the treasure. If nothing of this mad quest was his, why was he here? Because in a moment of weakness he’d said he would help, even though the whole mission was too unbelievable to be true. Yet here he was, because his parents and the King of England wanted an ugly gem called the Jewell of Kings, to which was attached the legend that whomever held the Jewell held the power over Scotland.

  If it was as simple as locating the gem, all would be easy because some Colquhoun clan had it in their possession. Attack clan, obtain gem and be done. Except Reynold insisted that there was a treasure behind the gem and they now also needed some bits of parchment and a gemmed dagger with a hollow handle to find it.

  This whole quest seemed a waste of his time, but he’d offered his help to Reynold, and meant it. Long estranged from his older brother, he wanted to know what a true family was like. Not his parents, though, who had an order for his capture, and no doubt wanted him dead by their own hands.

  Add in the fact his left hand had been axed from his wrist months ago, his life, however short now, was full. Especially because, although his wrist wound had healed, by some twisted fate the agony of it had only increased. The end of his arm felt constantly on fire, the jarring of anything stopped his heart, his breath.

  That made him short on patience. The way he was behaving right now was testament to that. He’d done nothing but rebuke Henry’s every offer of help and ordered him about as if he was...a servant. In the past, he had never been cheerful or had friendships. He had never trusted anyone enough for that. His first and only friendship was with Louve, and even that he wouldn’t admit to. However, he’d never been abusive with servants, even when his parents were around. He could afford the poor man some courtesy.

  ‘You were not stolen. It is not outside the realm that I’d order one of my own servants to assist me.’

  ‘Except I’m not one of your servants,’ Henry said. ‘You gave us all away, along with Ian’s fortress, to that Louve fellow. Although since he’s wed Biedeluue he’s agreeable.’

  The Warstone fortress owned and maintained by Ian of Warstone was a sizeable property. Ian’s death, however, had left Balthus a probable heir. Except he hadn’t wanted it. So, with some parchments signed, notarised and sent off to two kingdoms, it was now the property of his mercenary friend Louve, who’d married a servant, Biedeluue.

  ‘You don’t belong to anybody, according to Louve. This is merely a courtesy you do.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me what I was getting into. If I’d known I’d be in your surly company for more than a sennight, I would have brought all my knives instead of the essentials.’

  Balthus turned on him. ‘Then why did you?’

  Henry looked down, a flush across the top of his ears giving him away. ‘It looked like you... Never mind.’

  Balthus refused to acknowledge that Henry pitied him because he’d lost his hand. He was almost grateful Henry looked away instead of answering a question that Balthus already knew the answer to. He was a mere excuse for a man, and absolutely worthless as a Warstone.

  ‘It’s done,’ Balthus said. ‘You need to concentrate on the landscape. Séverine had something in her hair. It wasn’t red.’

  ‘Ash, then, or soot, no doubt.’ Henry wagged his finger as if it was of some import. ‘I was watching the two boys in the field. They seemed happy.’

  Clovis and Pepin were together. He didn’t know what to make of tha
t. His own parents had pitted one brother against the other since their births. They were united if anyone attacked the family, but amongst themselves they were more enemies than brothers. He was the youngest and always at a disadvantage, but he’d grown fast and had learned to look for weaknesses rather than asking to play.

  His childhood had been one of opulent survival. He didn’t know what to make of the boys’ seeming poverty, or the fact that they were happy.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Henry said.

  Here they were back to the apologies again. True, he’d asked for Henry to help contain them, but he was the one who hadn’t approached them properly. He’d been stunned they were there. Riveted that Séverine still had a hold on him after all these years.

  ‘No apologies are wanted or needed,’ Balthus said.

  ‘It needs to be said,’ Henry pointed out. ‘You hired me to help find Séverine and the boys and tell them about Ian, and the woman conked me on the head and ran past me. Me!’

  It was safer Henry only knew part of the mission. Balthus had not regaled him with tales of treasure and legends, especially as it could get him killed, so it had seemed prudent. As for Séverine’s escape, at least Henry had the excuse that he had been bashed in the head with a log. Balthus’s reason was only Séverine’s beauty.

  ‘What did the steward ever say to you when you made a mistake?’

  ‘I got less pay, or a physical punishment, but that ended when I gained this.’ Henry pinched the fat of his belly and jiggled it.

  Balthus smirked. He didn’t want to like Henry—his life wasn’t safe for friendships.