by Tamara Leigh
She stared at her hands. “’Tis done, the worst is over and…” She shrugged. “In future, when you entertain guests, I shall keep my dignity about me and not shame you.”
Something was amiss. The woman he had lived with these past months would not so easily let go of the quarrel they had begun hours ago. But he would leave it be, for he had yet to answer the question she had earlier put to him. And answer it he must, for she would soon hear it from others.
“I owe you an explanation about Sir Michael—”
“Nay!” She shook her head. “It does not matter.”
Her vehemence surprised him. What an enigma she had become. “He is dead,” he said quietly.
She threaded her fingers together over her belly. “I had guessed as much.”
He lifted her chin. “How came you by that?”
“’Tis obvious ill fortune befell him. Otherwise, you would not have been so reluctant to discuss him.”
Gilbert was more inclined to believe she had either overheard his conversation with Sir Royce, or someone had carried the tale to her.
“You are saddened?” he asked.
“Of course.” Tears filled her eyes.
Gilbert pulled her against his side and stroked her hair as she spilled silent grief upon his tunic. He did not understand how she could cry over a man whom she had professed to have no feelings for. Unless…
Though the possibility did not sit well with him, when she calmed, he asked, “Mayhap you loved Sir Michael after all?”
She tilted her head back. “Nay, Gilbert, I have told you I did not have feelings for Sir Michael. That has not changed.”
His relief was immeasurable, but quickly forgotten when he realized she had not asked the cause of the knight’s death. It served to strengthen his belief she had been privy to the information beforehand.
“Graeye—”
“Gilbert,” she said urgently, “I wish to know of Philip’s crimes. Will you tell me?”
He stiffened. “You tread where you ought not.”
“I need to know.” She placed an entreating hand on his arm. “’Tis your child I carry, and yet I know little of you—indeed, little of my own family. I would simply hear the truth.”
“Would you accept as truth what I reveal?”
“Aye. Methinks I am ready for it.”
He dropped his arm from around her and rose from the bed. “Did you know your brother was betrothed to my sister, Lizanne?”
“Edward told me.”
“She adored Philip, fancied herself in love with him, though it was only his looks and her youth that led her to believe herself to be in that absurd state. Nearly five years ago, when she was fifteen, at the behest of my father, I took her from Penforke to wed your brother.”
When he fell silent and his muscles bunched, Graeye knew the emotions that rose in him were dark.
“Though it was during the time of Stephen’s reign when lawlessness abounded,” he continued, “I was too self-assured to believe the short ride warranted a sizable escort. You see, I had not counted on the delay caused by such a cumbersome baggage train, and when night fell, we were forced to erect a camp. We had only bedded down when we were set upon. All my men were slaughtered and Lizanne was…”
When he drew a deep breath but no further words were forthcoming, Graeye said delicately, “Violated?”
“Nay,” he growled, “though nearly. Still, that accursed brother of yours refused to honor the marriage contract based on grounds she was no longer chaste.”
Seeking to distract him from the injustice done his sister, she said, “What of you, Gilbert? Did you manage to escape?”
He swung away from the brazier and advanced on her. “Think you I am a coward?”
She stared at him. His anger was so tangible she felt she would have to physically push it aside to reach the man beyond it—were she strong enough. “Pray, do not put words in my mouth, Gilbert. I did not mean to imply that. I know you are not such a man.”
He halted before her. “Did you not accuse me of being a coward before?”
Had she? She had to search backward to discover the encounter to which he referred. It was true that she had accused him of such a failing in the graveyard on the morning he had sent her from Medland.
“I did, and I am sorry for it. But I was angry and only sought to hurt you as you were hurting me.”
He did not respond.
“Sit beside me,” she urged.
He ignored her invitation. “I fought them…wounded some…killed some. Then they left me for dead. A cripple.”
“Not a cripple,” she protested.
He caught up her hand and placed it on his thigh. “A cripple,” he repeated and drew her hand down the thick ridge of a scar that could be felt through his leggings.
Graeye did not resist as he guided her hand lower and around the side of his calf where the scar melded with the smoother skin below.
“So many promises to keep, and I failed,” he said and released her. “I still remember Lizanne’s scream. Do you know how it feels to live years with such a reminder of one’s failings?”
Graeye sat back, shook her head.
“Would you like to know who ordered the raid upon our camp?” His voice was so raw with pain it grated in her ears.
He seemed like an animal caught in a trap—oddly resigned to its fate, yet ready to hurl itself at the offender if given the chance.
“Not even a guess?’ he prodded, his mouth a hard slash across his handsome face.
She knew what he wanted to hear. “Philip?” she whispered.
He raised his eyebrows. “What name was that?”
“It was Philip, was it not?”
Now he smiled, a bitter thing that nearly frightened her. “Perceptive.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“You have much to learn about the blood that runs through your veins, Graeye Charwyck. ’Twas not simply that Lizanne was not beautiful enough. Her dowry was deemed insufficient when the opportunity arose for him to wed a wealthy widow. Thus, he thought to rid himself of my sister without suffering the consequences of a broken betrothal. He ordered our deaths.”
Graeye lowered her eyes. It was not that she did not believe Gilbert, but that she did not want to. Her memories of Philip were alive with the cruelties he had visited upon her, but that of which Gilbert accused her brother was the purest form of evil.
“So you are not ready to accept the truth after all?” he concluded.
“I had not thought the truth would be so terrible.” She forced her gaze to his. “It is not easy to accept that such evil resides in a man’s soul. It frightens me.”
Her reluctant, albeit undeclared, acceptance of the truth seemed to calm him somewhat. “Did you learn nothing from your father’s attempt to murder you, Graeye?”
It was not something she would ever forget. But the old man had been half-mad over losing everything dear to him—and all to one he believed responsible for the death of his precious son. What was Philip’s excuse for the evil in his heart?
“When did you discover my brother was responsible for the attack?” she asked.
“Last summer, when he decided he would have Lizanne after all, though she was already wed to another.” He began to knead his thigh. “He abducted her when she was returning from a village on her husband’s demesne. The miscreant beat her, then tried to force himself upon her. He would have had her, too, if her husband and I had not discovered his encampment.”
Graeye felt as if he were leaving something out but did not press him.
“Your brother was bested in a fair duel, Graeye, and not one between him and myself, as you think. Though I did long for Philip’s blood to dress my blade, I fought and killed another. It was Lizanne’s husband who met at swords with your brother, and when Baron Wardieu bested Philip, the coward yielded.”
“But then…” She shook her head.
“Unlike Philip,” Gilbert continued, “Ranulf Wardieu
is an honorable man. It was only when your brother turned on him and attempted to put a knife through Ranulf’s heart that Philip earned an arrow through the back.”
“Your sister.”
“Aye, and it was more than justified.”
Now she understood. And believed. “I am sorry. I did not know. ’Tis no wonder you hate me as you do.”
He startled, and the anger that had tightened his brow eased. Leaning forward, he cupped her face. “I do not hate you, Graeye. I could never hate you.”
Hope bloomed in her. Was it possible he might one day come to care enough for her that they could put aside their differences and raise their child in harmony?
Whatever he saw in her eyes surely disconcerted him, for he drew his hand away, straightened, and said, “But I will not wed you,” and strode to the door. Then he was gone.
Graeye lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Now she understood what had driven his anger when he had come to Medland and discovered her identity—why he had believed she had seduced him in hopes of trapping him into marriage. And why he would never wed her, not even to give their child his name.
She had not thought she could entirely forgive him for the wrongs he had done her, but now she had no choice. Her family had given him every cause to distrust and dislike them. His anger was his due, even if she was innocent of much of what he believed of her. If it took her until the end of their time together, she would do all she could to right the wrongs done him and his family and prove she could be trusted. She would fight him no more. If he still wanted her as his leman once she delivered their child—
She clawed up handfuls of the coverlet on either side of her, shook her head. “I will not do that,” she said. “I will not!” All else she would give him, playing the lady of the castle in every way but that which landed her in his bed. She had repented of that sin with the promise she would not commit it again, that only marriage would find her as intimate with him as she had been that night at the waterfall, and she would not now turn her vow into a lie.
And if he takes his pleasure with other women? an insistent voice demanded. If you lose what little you have of him?
“Then I lose him,” she choked. Indeed, it was not if but when, for he had a man’s needs, did he not? Even if he never married as he had told it was unlikely he would do when he had come for her at Arlecy, eventually he would want a woman in his bed. And that woman might bear him children as well.
Then what will become of your child? the voice asked.
Gilbert had said he would have his heir from her, but what if this babe was not a son? And if it was a son, what guarantee was there he would not be set aside in favor of another?
The possibility nearly had her scrambling backward over her vows and convictions, but she refused to believe Gilbert would turn his back on their child. He did not love her, but he was capable of love, for she felt it when he looked upon her belly and laid a hand to it. With each little awakening throughout the night past, it had been there in his touch that caught the flutterings and kicks of the babe that grew impatient within the confines of her womb. And this morn, as she had stirred awake beneath a kiss upon her lips, Gilbert had moved to her belly and kissed it as well. She had feared he meant to try to seduce her, but he had smiled at her wide-eyed, breath-holding expression and quickly risen from the bed.
That did not mean the next time he would, though. And what if she wavered and, in a moment of weakness, yielded?
“I will have to leave,” she whispered. And if their babe was a boy…
With a sob, she released the coverlet and clasped her hands before her face. “Help me stay true. Help me see past this pain and fear so I might know what You would have me do. And give me the strength to do it, no matter how it may hurt.”
And, certes, it would be a fierce hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For two days, Graeye tried to repair the breach that had opened between Gilbert and her when she had insisted on knowing the truth about Philip. But Gilbert evaded her, seemingly no longer interested in seeking her out. The only time they were together was at meals, and then he brooded and kept his exchanges with her short and detached. Thus, she had as many days—and yet more reason—in which to ponder her precarious position and her babe’s future.
Now as she watched Gilbert leave the smithy where new weapons were being forged for the battle with Edward, she determined it was time they talked. When he entered the stables alone, she squared her shoulders, skirted the corral, and stepped into the building that smelled of horses and fresh-cut hay. Halting, she searched for a sign as to which stall he had entered.
One of the doors on the left-hand side was open, and she crossed to it. And caught her breath. Gilbert had removed his tunic, and his bare back above his chausses glistened with the warmth of the smithy, the muscles rolling beneath his skin as he applied himself to brushing his destrier’s coat.
She swallowed hard. “Are there not grooms to do that?”
He must have heard her approach—known it was she—for he showed no surprise. “There are.” Keeping his back to her, he drew the brush over the animal’s flank.
Graeye stepped into the stall and began to pick her way across the hay-strewn floor.
“Come no nearer,” he ordered.
“But—”
“No nearer!” He glanced over his shoulder. “I would not have you trampled beneath this animal’s hooves.”
She considered the horse and saw what Gilbert knew well. The high-strung destrier was agitated by her presence, its limbs tense, its great eyes rolling. A moment later, it snorted, tossed its head, and stamped a hoof.
“Step away, Graeye!”
She backed out of the stall.
“Now,” he said, “what is so important it cannot keep?”
“You have been avoiding me.”
“Aye.” He did not pause in his labors, now applying himself to the tangled mane. “For good reason.”
She was surprised that he acknowledged it. “What reason?”
He kept her waiting, moving about the destrier as if she had not asked a question. Finally, he said, “’Twas I who was not ready to talk of Philip. Though I am ashamed to admit it, speaking aloud the memories made them come alive again.”
Longing to ease the torment behind his reserve, she took a step forward. “Gilbert—”
“Stay where you are!” He glared at her. “If you do not have a care for yourself, have a care for our child.”
He was right, but his angry words hurt. “Gilbert,” she implored, “if I cannot come within, will you not come out? I do not wish to talk to your back.”
He ceased with the grooming and leveled his gaze upon her. “There is naught that needs discussing.”
She huffed. “You are stubborn, Gilbert Balmaine. I come to make peace and you scorn me. Are we to ever live in turmoil?”
He sighed, set aside the brush, and strode forward. Placing a hand on either side of the stall entrance, he looked down at her. “Is it peace you desire, Graeye, or just another truce?”
With him towering above her, the heat from his half-clothed body breathing across the space between them, it was difficult to think straight. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Peace.”
With no small amount of suspicion, he said, “Tell me.”
He was right to be wary, for she did not doubt his peace was different from hers—that his would include having her in his bed, making more illegitimate children who would ever be known for their parents’ sins, and further earning her the title of ‘harlot’ such that not even God could dislodge it.
She looked around. “Is there somewhere we can sit? I have much to say.”
Still, he did not move.
“Please, Gilbert—”
The sound of lowered voices from one of the stalls farther down the aisle moved his gaze from her. “The grooms are tending the horses,” he said, then turned back into the stall, retrieved his tunic, and dragged it on. Shortly, he
pulled the stall door closed and held out a hand. “Come. We will find privacy abovestairs.”
Graeye looked to the loft overhead. She nodded, reached to him, and tried not to think on how good it felt to have his hand enfold hers as he guided her to the steps and up.
Gilbert led her to a corner radiant with sunlight streaming in through the wide open doors by which bales were winched into the loft. After seeing her seated on one of the smaller bales, he stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Will you not sit beside me?” she asked.
He slid his gaze down her, and when he returned to her face, a muscle convulsed in his jaw. “I am alone in a loft with a woman I desire above all others, and with beds aplenty to be made amid the hay, so until I know the terms of your peace, methinks you ought to encourage me to remain standing.”
She had not considered that, and thinking on it made her face warm.
“Tell me about this peace of yours,” he prompted.
Now that the moment was upon her, it was more heavy than expected, the weight of it causing the words to sink down inside her. Determinedly, she dragged them back to the surface. “These past days, I have given much thought to my place at Penforke and our child’s future.”
Gilbert had been fairly certain he would not like what she had to say, and this seemed a bad beginning. From what he had come to know about his Graeye, her idea of peace would not likely mesh with his own.
Your Graeye? a snide voice slipped inside his head.
He tensed, then sent the voice scuttling away with the silent affirmation, Mine.
“And what have you concluded?” he asked, wishing he had not seated her in sunlight, for it loved her silvery eyes, pert nose, delicately bowed lips, and brilliantly gold hair nearly as much as he did.
Her gaze wavered, throat convulsed.
Nay, he thought, I will not like this at all.
“There are things that must needs be decided between us ere our child is born.”
“What things?” he asked more sharply than intended.
She momentarily closed her eyes. “When you are done with me—”
