The boy had lasted a night, and went so quietly that Nicholas hadn't known he was gone until those small, precious fingers had slackened around his own. The loss still ached like fire in that burnt-out part of him.
Faulkhurst had been totally deserted by then, by God and by any goodness that had ever dwelled there. The village was a shambles, its commerce as bankrupt as his soul.
He'd locked the gates, and every storeroom, every door. Then he'd tossed the ring of keys into the sea.
He'd spent a year of private atonement here on the edge of the world, finishing the chapel in his son's name, preparing himself for a life of penance in the brittle solitude of a monastery.
And then she had come flouncing through his castle gates, bringing her hopes and heresies and her irresistible anarchy.
It was the lack of that now, the silence, that disturbed him even more than the echoes ever had.
It ached of loss and nothingness.
Yet there was a sweet scent curling about him, slipping from the kitchen hall to scrub away the remembered reek of the hospital, a scent as foreign and familiar as moondust.
He was drawn down the passage toward the kitchen by the fragrance of newly baked bread, and the muffle of soft laughter.
He saw his wife first, standing at the end of the cook's table, dawn-fresh in her determined joy as she cut a thick slice of bread and placed it in Pippa's upturned palms.
"For Fergus, sweet."
"Here's for you, Ferguuuus!" The girl ran with her offering to the end of the table and plopped the bread in front of the old man, who smiled with his grandfatherly eyes.
"Thank ya, child."
"And for Dickon, Pippa." His wife had animated his kitchen with the sounds that he was certain he'd never hear again. And it frightened him to death.
As he stood in the doorway he wondered if he were invisible to them, if yesterday's haunting had been only a figment of his imagining, the lonely dreams of a madman.
If none of this was quite real. Not even the kiss that still scorched his cheek.
But that unthinkable possibility came apart in the next breath by his wife's uplifted gaze as it found him, by the startling tenderness that he saw there, and the surety that her prayers were being answered as quickly as she could pray them. That he was one of those she had waited for.
"Good morning, steward."
His heart leaped and the words 'good morning, wife' hung in his chest.
Dickon stood abruptly, scraping the bench against the stone floor, and took up sentry duty beside Eleanor, his hand on the hilt of a fine-bladed dagger—stolen no doubt off a lord who should have known better.
Then he was surrounded by noise, like waves lapping at his knees. He was tugged toward the end of the table, directly opposite his wife, by a warm little hand that fit like his memories into his own, tugging with such insistent, undaunted strength that he had to follow.
"Come, Sir Graystone. We missed you. Will you help us fix the bakehouse? See, I told you he wasn't a mean ghost, Nellamore."
"You were right, sweet. But his name is Master Nicholas." The woman's voice was gently beguiling, but her gaze was bright with the enormous challenge she'd brought upon herself, flushed with an invitation that staggered him speechless. "Will you give him some of Hannah's bread, Pippa?"
"Oh, yes!"
He hadn't expected to be besieged so early in the morning; would rather have had a moment alone with her, to devise a battle plan before her battalion appeared. But a moment later a thick slice of bread was being held up to him, as sweetly scented as his wife.
"Here, Sir Gargoyle." The bread sagged and then tore through its fragile middle, opening a window to three cherry-stained fingers, and then a pair of blue, grinning eyes. "Ooops!"
His wife sent a nudge his way with one of her quick frowns, as though he were shunning some sacred morning ritual and would cause an outrage if he didn't cooperate.
"Hannah made the bread this morning, Sir Gargoyle." The still-steaming slice tore through to the hard crust just as he rescued it.
"Thank you," he said, feeling like a trained bear in the market square, with everyone watching him as he put a corner of the crust into his mouth and bit down.
Hannah chewed in tandem with him, the artist steeling herself against her patron's critical opinion, when in truth it was the greatest pleasure he'd had in a very long time: the civilizing taste of the bread, the scent, the texture, the embracing warmth of the kitchen.
"Faulkhurst's first loaf, Master Nicholas," his wife said, taking the last of it for herself: a steaming part of his own. "It pleases me—all of us—to have you here to share in it."
A woman who made ceremonies of the everyday, who stood at the head of his scarred kitchen table in her plain, russet green chemise and work-worn kirtle like a queen presiding over her motley ministers, as though she believed they could bring about miracles.
Not that he had imagined a queen would ever kiss cheeks and brows, or console her ministers as they sat round her council table, nor would she fondly ruffle their hair with a touch that he craved.
"My compliments to your baker, madam." He turned from his wife's steady gaze and gave the elderly woman a nod.
"Oh, thank you, sir." Hannah blushed as pink as a young woman and he couldn't help but smile back at her as she gathered Pippa's hand. "Come along with me, Pippa, Lisabet. We've mint and thyme to gather out of all those weeds."
They left his wife smiling after them, until she turned it on him and sent his heart spinning, branding his cheek again with the memory of that unaccountable kiss.
"You'll never know how blessed we are to have Hannah with us, Master Nicholas. I'm an utter calamity in the kitchen."
Hardly a calamity, he wanted to say. Damp and dewy as she'd been last night among the kettles, and brimming with all the scents of a spice cabinet as she was just now.
"And to that end, sir, very near the top of my long list is the bakehouse. It's fallen down. Did you know that? The roof caved in, at least."
"Aye, I'm aware of the state of the ovens and the bakehouse." He'd seen it collapse in an elegant shower of glassy, red sparks that he'd doused to keep his bailey from catching on fire while the earth pitched and swayed. The village hadn't been as fortunate.
"The kitchen oven is large enough for the few of us, but scarcely big enough for the hundreds of loaves we'll soon need every day."
Hundreds, indeed. The arrival of Fergus and Hannah had been a divine jest.
"We need a mason, Master Nicholas."
"I'll fix your bakehouse, madam."
"Can you truly?" She looked equally pleased and skeptical when he nodded, and retrieved the sheaf of paper she'd been working on last eve.
"I've had some practice." A whole chapel, nearly finished.
"Practice enough to shore up an undercroft vault, I hope."
"Why do you ask?"
"I don't know much about the ways of buildings, Master Nicholas, but the arch beneath the west curtain wall doesn't look quite plumb. And the passage beneath it—"
"Beneath the west wall?" Damnation. He knew the extent of the damage all too well, and suffered a horrific image of his wife lost to the cave-in. "Don't tell me you've been tromping around down there? I barricaded that passage last night against just that sort of trespassing."
"I'm not a fool, and I wasn't tromping or trespassing, or treading on your barricades. I was looking for my husband's food stores. With all due caution, I assure you."
"I don't care if you were looking for Bayard's massive treasure of gold and silver—"
"Oh? Do you think he might truly have a treasury, Nicholas? We could surely use one."
"I don't know, madam—but the west curtain wall is dangerous and out of bounds from now on. Do you understand?"
She drew herself up, queenly again in her squared shoulders and glare. "Aye, steward, it is dangerous. At least until it can be fixed—which I hope is very soon. Which is another matter high on my list."
"Add defense to that list of yours, madam. I want a guard posted in the barbican at all times."
"At night only." She added something to her list with a flick of her quill. "I can't spare anyone."
"It's not a matter of sparing—"
"That be my job, my lady," Dickon sputtered suddenly. "Guarding the castle. You said so." He'd been hovering behind her, as though he thought she was in imminent danger of being accosted. Now the lad stepped bravely between her and Nicholas, his hand on his dagger. "I'm milady's constable."
"You?" Nicholas looked between Eleanor and the lad.
"Me!"
Christ. A green-willow boy—a highwayman—for a constable. He held back his protest, though; the boy was, in truth, the only option at the moment. Trainable, perhaps. He'd raised up many a squire to knighthood; it might be possible to raise a thief to a constable.
Huh—easier to raise the dead.
"Then get yourself and that dagger of yours to the gate, lad, and take your watch."
The boy bristled. "Milady wants the armory put to rights first. Don't you, milady?"
"I do. Perhaps, steward, since the barbican and the armory are nearly in the same place, Dickon may keep his post and make sense of the chaos there at the same time." She was wearing a fiercely motherly frown now, ready to pounce on him if he dared take another swipe at her cub.
But he had a point to make here, a clarification of his power to streamline his efforts to secure Faulkhurst for his wife all the sooner.
All the sooner to be gone.
"I doubt that, madam."
"I could." Dickon stamped his foot on the stone floor. "I bloody well will. I've given my word to my lady to do just as she orders."
Nicholas looked across the table at his wife, feeling himself on trial, with more to lose than he'd imagined. Her respect, for one, and her trust—and that surprised him.
"As you should, boy, but would you give your life in her defense?"
His wife charged in his direction. "Master Nicholas, that's enough."
But the boy pushed past her and barred her way. "I'd fall on my dagger right now, if I she asked me to."
She nearly threw herself in front of the boy and wagged a terrifying finger at him. "You'll do nothing of the sort, Dickon." Then at Nicholas. "And you, Master Nicholas will end this."
He would indeed, just as he'd planned. "Aye, my lad, your lady has chosen well in you."
Dickon's mouth had been open to protest, but he was quick and managed instead a squawking, "Has she? I mean, aye! She has."
"That I have, steward. And you should remember that the choice is mine to make." Eleanor was appalled, unable to understand this baiting Dickon. It was unfair, unseemly, and out of his character—or so she hoped. The boy looked to her with pleading eyes, as though he were defending his soul, not knowing if his judge was devil or angel.
Nicholas was circling the pair of them, glaring first at Dickon, then challenging Eleanor with a gaze that heated her nape and drifted like silk across her lips and made her touch them with her tongue.
"You'll do well, lad, to remember that a castle is a place of defense and constant danger."
"I know that, sir!"
"Doubly so, Dickon, because our lady seems bound to trust anyone at all without cause." The blackguard stopped and stepped closer to Dickon. "Have you noticed that?"
The boy, once her eager champion, was now agreeing fiercely with Nicholas, his brows beetling and his head bobbing. "She won't listen to me. Never has."
"Nor to me. Not a word, lad. Dismisses entirely the idea that someone might wish her harm."
"I never said that, steward."
He cast her a negligent nod and put a confederate's arm around Dickon's shoulder, patting it companionably. "We've trouble on our hands, Master Dickon."
"Aye, we do, sir. Big trouble." The boy had caught up Nicholas's gravity completely and mirrored it gesture for gesture, even shaking his head in masculine sympathy for their entire gender.
"If you mean that I am trouble, gentlemen, you haven't seen the sort of trouble I can be." Oh, but why bother with the pair of them. Next they'd be marking out their territories and telling daring stories of their greatest battles.
"As our lady's seneschal, lad, I am her deputy in all the matters of her estate." Nicholas groaned broadly, as though all his teeth hurt him. "Do pity me for that."
The bloody lout.
"Oh, I do, sir," Dickon said, his loyalty now shifted entirely to her steward. "A pissy chore. I've held it myself for more than a year."
"Aye, Dickon. You've done an admirable job getting her this far safely—considering."
"Considering nothing, steward."
But the man only lifted his wily gaze to hers and spoke to her solely, making her wonder if he knew just how badly she wanted to thump him. "'Tis my responsibility to guard and defend her rights and her person from here on. But I can't be everywhere, Dickon."
"No, sir?" The lad was in total thrall.
With sudden clarity, Eleanor saw Nicholas's purpose. How artful this steward of hers could be, so expertly politic when it suited him. She'd seen Edward do the same many times, patch over an outrage that he had caused himself through his ruthlessness, merely by changing sides to that of his opponent and becoming an accomplice.
A worthy skill and a highly treacherous one, to be guarded against at all times.
Thank God the man was so transparent.
"As constable, Dickon, you are my eyes and ears when I can't be there to watch over the lady Eleanor."
Dickon's cheeks glowed in the light of Nicholas's praise. "I'll be your nose too, sir, if you need me to be." He was nearly singing.
"Indeed." The man had a gregarious smile locked down tightly in his eyes, one that drifted to her briefly and made her wonder how often and how deeply she would fall for his cunning herself.
"What about me, sir?" Fergus had been watching with wariness, and now struggled to his feet like an old soldier. "I'm a carpenter, you know."
"A carpenter, Fergus?" Eleanor could hardly believe their good fortune. "There you see, Master Nicholas? I prayed for a carpenter last night, and here he is. Have you done any smithing, Fergus? We need a blacksmith as much as we need a carpenter."
Fergus's brows knitted as he frowned and chewed on the end of his moustache. "Well, my lady—actually, I never actually been a carpenter. Though it's always been my wish to take up the trade."
"Ah."
Oh, blast. Eleanor hid her disappointment behind a huge smile that she was trying desperately to feel. "Good then, Fergus."
Nicholas asked evenly, "What was your trade, Fergus?"
Eleanor hoped for some craft that had required at least some knowledge of a hammer: a cobbler, a wainwright, an apprentice to either. Please, God.
"I was a nightman, sir. All my life." Fergus scratched at his chin, then braved the stony severity of Nicholas's jaw, some foot and a half above him. "A cleaner of privies and cesspits."
Eleanor caught the wholly out of proportion laughter in her throat, amazed at her steward's outward patience and grateful that he didn't crush Fergus with the derision that was so plainly in his thoughts.
"Then you are well ahead of your wishes, Fergus," he said, "as my lady needs a carpenter just now." He turned all of that dark-eyed irony on her, lifted a brow and her spirits all in that single gesture. A partnership. "And if she has no objection, you and I and Dickon here will see to inspecting her castle for creaking timbers and precarious walls. If my lady so orders."
The mutinous blackguard, using her own words against her. Yet an odd feeling engulfed her, warm and embracing, of being wholly and steadfastly protected.
"Aye, go then, sir."
"As you wish, milady." He bowed only slightly, but with all the courtly nuances of any lord at Westminster.
Aye, and more lordly than most.
"Oh, and we are in sore need of a blacksmith, Nicholas. Do let me know when one comes though the gate."
She felt altogether tousled by his scowl, by the fierceness of it that seemed to lift her hair and brush at her neck and the ties on the front of her chemise.
"And you, madam, stay out of passages beneath the west curtain wall."
That made her smile, way down deep in her heart.
He was a mystery, someone else's wandering knight, to be sure. But hers to tame now, however briefly.
However magically.
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
Eleanor began an accounting of the contents of all the storage rooms that she'd opened so far. But the clutter was so widespread and haphazard, with sacks of dried peas stored next to threshing forks, and those on top of fine linens, the only way to ensure a thorough accounting was to put everything in one room and sort through it.
And the only room that would begin to hold the contents of Faulkhurst was the great hall.
"A treasure hunt!" Lisabet's shouts and Pippa's squealing followed the pair of them into the undercrofts, and soon they were racing up and down the tower stairs, their arms filled with a mix of cups, shoes, and brooms.
Eleanor sectioned off the hall for kitchen goods, for linens, for furniture and chests, setting aside the odd hammer or harness for the stables. It would be a weeklong endeavor at the least to find everything, even if she could spare everyone in the castle for this single task.
"Please let me know immediately, Lisabet, if you find any books." Eleanor rescued the pail of candle bits out of the girl's arms and set it with the two jugs of lamp oil. "They'll be very large. Heavy, too."
"Books to read?"
"Only the estate records, sweet. Inventories and accountings, the harvest schedules."
Lisabet wrinkled up her dust-smudged nose. "What kind of reading is that?"
The most valuable kind of all: information. "Faulkhurst's best kept secrets, Lisabet."
"A real treasure! Pippa! There's a book somewhere with a secret inside!" Lisabet dashed up the tower stairs.
"Where did you hide your black heart, husband?" The records had to be in the castle somewhere, and with any luck she'd find the estate office at the same time, behind one of Bayard's hundreds of locked doors.
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